Rolling Stone calls her the Gen Z version of Barbara Walters, but her millions of fans know to Call Her Daddy. Alex Cooper's rise to podcasting royalty has been one for the ages; this is the story of how she got there.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00Rolling Stone calls her the Gen Z version of Barbara Walters,
00:03but her millions of fans know to call her daddy. Alex Cooper's rise to
00:06podcasting royalty has been one for the ages. This is the story of how she got there.
00:12Cooper's rise is impressive, but it wasn't exactly rags to riches.
00:15Born on August 21, 1994, she was raised in the affluent suburb Newton, Pennsylvania.
00:21Both of Cooper's parents held high-paying jobs. Her mother is a psychologist,
00:25and her father works in television production, focusing on sporting events such as NHL hockey
00:30games. She attended the private Pennington School, but she didn't grow up feeling wealthy
00:34compared to her classmates at the posh institution. She told The New York Times,
00:38"'I was constantly aware of money growing up. I remember, of my friends around me,
00:42I was considered the poorest."
00:43That feeling of financial inferiority surely influenced the competitive streak that has
00:48driven her since her youth. As she told New York Times Magazine in 2022,
00:52"'I am so competitive. I push myself to be the best I can.'"
00:56Cooper was raised in a family of athletes. She's revealed in interviews that her dad
01:00played Division I hockey at Wisconsin, her mom was an equestrian, and both her siblings
01:04played sports. Cooper chose soccer and played it successfully, receiving scholarship offers
01:08from some of America's top schools. But she decided against an Ivy League school and
01:13accepted a full scholarship to play Division I soccer at Boston University. As she told
01:17the Trentonian in 2013,
01:19"'I love soccer, and the level of soccer at Ivy League colleges is not comparable to D1.'"
01:24Her athletic career came to an end after an undisclosed incident involving one of her
01:28coaches. As Cooper told Cosmopolitan, the experience had left her with so much lingering
01:33trauma that she was still not ready to publicly address it at the time. The incident, she said,
01:37fundamentally changed her. Specifically, she told the Times that it made her a stronger person.
01:42But what happened? Without offering further details, Cooper noted she didn't play at all
01:46during her senior year, but still kept her athletic scholarship, an unusual arrangement
01:50that she says indicates plenty about where the wrong was done.
01:54After graduating with a degree in film and television, Cooper moved to New York and
01:58tried to break into the field. While paying her rent with a job selling ads for Gotham Magazine,
02:02she came upon the idea of starting a podcast. She later recalled to the Los Angeles Times that
02:07she'd never actually listened to a podcast before, but she still had an idea of the kind of show she
02:12wanted to make. She teamed up with her then-roommate, Sophia Franklin, and began Call Her
02:16Daddy. As Cooper told Vanity Fair, the title came from a T-shirt she liked to wear in college that
02:20evoked uncomfortable reactions from men. She recalled,
02:23"[They'd be frustrated, and I could tell it was because I shouldn't have this on my chest.
02:27They're like, we're daddy, and I'm like, no, I'm daddy."
02:30From the very start of the show, Cooper and Franklin served up raw,
02:34raunchy, and unvarnished conversations on sex and relationships. It was a style they
02:38would come to describe as locker-room talk, but for chicks. That approach resonated with
02:42female listeners, and Call Her Daddy began attracting an audience. As 19-year-old fan
02:47Addison Rose told The New York Times in 2020,
02:49"[It's interesting to hear sex talked about in such an honest way from a women's perspective.
02:53It was refreshing."
02:55Call Her Daddy's early popularity captured the attention of digital media company Barstool
02:59Sports. Within weeks of the podcast's 2018 debut, the duo signed a three-year deal with Barstool
03:04to host the show. Initially, in this arrangement, Cooper and Franklin were reportedly both paid
03:09$75,000 per year. Cooper was aware that a podcast from two women's point of view
03:14might seem like a poor fit for Barstool, and plenty of men in the audience initially agreed.
03:18So she addressed the backlash in a blog post, writing,
03:21"[How did a D1 athlete and an economics major who quit her job on Wall Street
03:25end up at Barstool?] Well, Barstool liked our idea of uncensored, real,
03:29female locker-room talk, which quite frankly is just as nasty as guy locker-room talk,
03:33and we had no problem exploiting our experiences, as well as ourselves,
03:37for our listeners' entertainment."
03:39We're starting from the bottom, but I promise you, we're gonna take this place over."
03:43Within two months of signing the deal, Call Her Daddy exploded from 12,000 downloads per episode
03:48to 2 million. However, that sudden increase in popularity would soon drive a rift between the
03:53co-hosts. As Call Her Daddy became more successful, Cooper began to feel it had outgrown the platform
03:59it started on. In 2020, the hosts were still in the middle of their three-year deal when
04:03they began efforts to unleash themselves from Barstool. What began with cryptic clues became
04:08open warfare when they essentially went on strike by refusing to produce new episodes of the show.
04:12In May 2020, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy briefly took over Call Her Daddy. He posted an
04:18episode where he accused Cooper and Franklin of trying to illegally exit their contract with
04:22Barstool and characterized them as, quote, unprofessional, disloyal, and greedy.
04:26Meanwhile, the New York Post reported that tension had also risen between Cooper and Franklin,
04:30with one source saying,
04:32They're not speaking to each other anymore. They've completely turned on each other and
04:36started arguing over who was the real talent and who did more of the heavy lifting."
04:39Franklin told Rolling Stone that Cooper wanted to stick with Barstool,
04:42while she wanted to pursue more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. When the dust
04:46settled in May 2020, Cooper announced she'd sign a new solo deal with Barstool
04:50to continue Call Her Daddy without Franklin.
04:53This brand, The Daddy Gang, is bigger than Sophia and me."
05:00After taking Call Her Daddy's reigns, Cooper began reworking the podcast to be less raunchy.
05:05As she explained to Rolling Stone, she'd started to feel that the show's graphic
05:08sex talk had run its course. She said,
05:10Eventually, towards the end, I was like,
05:12I am going to lose my mind if we have to do one more sex segment and pretend we had sex this week.
05:17I resented the character that I had built."
05:19Then came COVID-19. While isolating during the pandemic, she took a hard look at what
05:23she'd achieved with Call Her Daddy and realized she wanted to take it in a different direction.
05:28At the 2023 Cannes Lions Film Festival, she said,
05:31I was a Division I athlete. I went to college. I studied film and communications.
05:35There was more I wanted to discuss."
05:37Call Her Daddy's evolved format increased its popularity, and Cooper received more
05:41opportunities. In 2021, Variety reported that Cooper entered a $60 million deal with Spotify
05:47to become the podcast's exclusive carrier for three years. That payday was so significant
05:51that she immediately became the highest-paid female podcaster in history. Naturally,
05:56Cooper was beyond proud that she'd entered the big leagues, boasting to the Los Angeles Times,
06:00A woman just got what in the past would have been a male contract.
06:03In June 2023, Cooper and then-fiancé Matt Kaplan co-founded Trending. Variety described the company
06:09as committed to elevating today's voices and crafting tomorrow's stories for an independent,
06:13resourceful, and inclusive generation. Two months later, Cooper also formed her own production
06:18company. A subsidiary of Trending, the Unwell network was launched to produce content for
06:23other rising stars. Cooper's first two acquisitions were social media phenom Alex Earle and British
06:28TikTok sensation Madeline Argy. Appropriately, both launched their own podcasts under the Unwell
06:33banner, Pretty Lonesome with Madeline Argy and Hot Mess with Alex Earle. Cooper's intentions
06:37for Unwell were clear. As she told The New York Times,
06:40In fall 2023, Cooper took Call Her Daddy on the road for its first run of live shows. The
06:53seven-stop Unwell tour featured a different celebrity guest and shirtless male dancers.
06:58Described by The New York Times as one-woman shows wrapped in a rowdy bachelorette party,
07:02the circus-like atmosphere was a world apart from Cooper's typically intimate interviews.
07:06As Kaplan told The Times,
07:07There's a call to action to have fun and party. No one wants to come to the
07:11Call Her Daddy tour and just, like, listen.
07:14Daddy gang, it is officially opening night of the Unwell tour."
07:18The tour brought her into contact with fans for the first time, and they turned out in force.
07:22The experience of meeting her daddy gang was emotional for both Cooper and Kaplan. He recalled,
07:26I started to cry the first night, and so did she.
07:29Alex has worked so hard to have an authentic relationship with these women.
07:33In April 2024, Cooper and Kaplan tied the knot in Mexico's Riviera Maya. Call Her Daddy listeners
07:38knew Kaplan as Mr. Sexy Zoom Man, a nickname Cooper gave him because they met via Zoom meeting.
07:43Interviewed by W Magazine, Cooper admitted she'd been dubious about marriage in the past
07:48because she thought so many marriages were unhealthy for both partners. She explained,
07:52With Matt, it immediately was obvious to me,
07:54once our relationship progressed to that point that it was time, that yes, I would love to marry him.
07:58Cooper explained that Kaplan's ongoing support for her career
08:01convinced her he was husband material, as her success made many men she dated insecure.
08:06Cooper took on a new challenge when she signed with NBCUniversal to host Watch with Alex Cooper,
08:11a series of live watch parties for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
08:14Discussing the opportunity with NBC Sports, she said,
08:17As a former athlete, the chance to cheer on the world's greatest athletes at the Olympics
08:22is beyond thrilling. On late night with Seth Meyers, Cooper revealed that she had a family
08:26connection to the Olympics. Her father, a TV producer specializing in sports,
08:30had worked on coverage of previous Games, and her sister is an editor
08:33who worked on the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
08:36If anything, I'm the last person in my family to do the Olympics."
08:39The series showcased Cooper watching the Games as they aired alongside friends,
08:43comedians, athletes, and various celebrities while fans could weigh in.
08:47Cooper's still faithfully host Call Her Daddy and is clearly grateful for the platform she's
08:51built with it. But if she keeps getting high-profile gigs, covering the Olympics
08:54may just be the start of an exciting new chapter for the podcaster.