Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 15, 2026
A recent investigation from Vanity Fair delved into unfolding behind the scenes drama at Unwell Media, the operation behind the wildly popular podcast Call Her Daddy. The company, founded by the podcast’s host, Alex Cooper, and her husband Matt Kaplan, has faced accusations of fostering an abusive workplace marred by “fear, anxiety, and paranoia.”
More than 30 current or former employees of Unwell — largely women in their 20s, according to the report — said that the company was hostile to its workers and that Kaplan used ableist slurs against his staff. He was also accused of commenting frequently on their physical appearances and making invasive queries about their sex lives. One freelance contractor recalled seeing the technical crew “break down in tears” as Kaplan threatened not to pay them and said, “Do you know who I am? Do you know who my wife is?”
It’s a major blow to the image of Unwell Media and Cooper, who is the host of one of the most listened-to podcasts on the planet. Call Her Daddy’s popularity is tough to overstate. In January 2025, the show received Spotify’s Silver Creator Milestone Award after reaching 250 million streams on the platform. A documentary about Cooper and her success premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. The deal that Cooper signed with Sirius XM was reportedly worth $125 million. Alex Cooper is, in more ways than one, the female Joe Rogan, and now, she’s facing a controversy that will irrevocably dent her image.
I must admit that the popularity of Call Her Daddy is one of those things I will never fully understand. It’s a bad show, so tediously bland and repetitive that I feel less nourished after every clip I listen to. Yet people love this show, and the guests it attracts include some of the most recognisable celebrities on the planet. During her 2024 Presidential run, Kamala Harris sat down with Cooper for an interview, a move critics claimed was vacuous but spoke to how vast the podcast’s audience is. In 2026 alone, the guest list has included Michelle Obama, Gayle King, Cara Delevingne, and Sarah J. Maas. Cooper has successfully moulded Call Her Daddy into the face of a must-visit platform for any celebrity with something to sell, putting her alongside many other online favourites like Hot Ones and Subway Takes. It’s a far cry from the podcast’s origins as a sex advice and comedy show amplified by one of the most toxic voices in modern media.
The show was originally a two-hander, featuring Cooper and her one-time roommate Sofia Franklyn. It was designed to be raunchy, honest, and very late-2010s in its girlboss-isms. Eventually, it caught the eye of Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports, who signed themm up to a salaried position and claimed all IP rights to the podcast. In 2020, after a very public fallout, Call Her Daddy broke free from Barstool but also left behind Franklyn, who accused Cooper of negotiating in secret with Portnoy and cutting her out of the deal (it was also reported that her boyfriend of the time, Peter Nelson, who was working as an executive for HBO Sports, advised Franklin to refuse Barstool’s contract offer.)
When Cooper relaunched the show as a solo effort, it changed formats. No longer would it be an explicit chat about sex and romance but a casual celebrity interview show. Cooper would ask softballs to A-Listers and create a general air of “you go girl” that proved popular with listeners and guests alike. Soon, she had a media empire, helped along by Kaplan, a film producer with credits on the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series. Unwell Media has expanded to include a beverage line and creative agency. Cooper will also appear as herself in the Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity.
Cooper and her work is the epitome of basic. It wasn’t always like that, but it is telling how the jump from something personality driven and age-bracketed like sex advice to the universal blandness of being nice to famous people greatly increased her audience and net worth. You don’t listen to Call Her Daddy in 2026 because you’re dazzled by Cooper’s interviewing skills. She is, like the vast majority of influencer-driven and celebrity podcast content, pretty mediocre (although, at the very least, she doesn’t endlessly interrupt her guests like the Smartless guys.) When Rolling Stone named her “the new generation’s Barbara Walters”, they were not commending her journalistic prowess but noting how a conversation with her is now a standard part of the entertainment promotional cycle.
Why talk to Cooper? Because she’s perfectly pleasant and unchallenging and you know you’ll never have to face a question more provocative than, “Why are you so awesome?” She’s not alone in this, of course. It seems to be the default mode for influencers looking to branch out of TikTok skits: set up a podcast where you can offer your vast audience to another star and make them seem cute and relatable while letting them control the narrative. And most of these influencers suck at it. Have you listened to Jake Shane’s podcast? It is unbearable. Oh my lord, I may need to write about that later because that man aggravates me.
Cooper is not aggravating, at least. But her unbearable lightness in content and depth makes her show feel kind of pointless to me. But I’m obviously in the minority. Millions love her. They relate to and aspire to be this young millennial who hustled her way to the top through pure personality. She went from a hot girl in the city looking for a good time to a boss bitch with a rich husband, a wedding covered by Vogue, and a baby on the way (all of which is monetizable content, of course.) It relied on an image of not merely familiarity - everyone knows an Alex, so the narrative goes - but of camaraderie. She’s just one of the girls, and any one of us could get into that circle.
The reveal that Unwell Media is allegedly a hive of misogyny fostered in large part by Cooper’s husband probably won’t sink her career. When you get to a nine-figure deal, you’re essentially uncancellable. It does, however, show the cold truth that lies behind every girlboss business: the same old model of exploitation with a vague sheen of pink. It’s pretty tough to sell female empowerment to your fans for profit, even in its most diluted and inoffensive form, and not give in to the temptation to harm. Letting your dear hubby do the shaming is especially cheap.
But she’s too big to fail now. Call Her Daddy is the new establishment, complete with all the financial investments that entails. Besides, being wilfully ignorant behind a microphone and screwing over others to get your bag seems to be the status quo for modern podcasting empires. If it’s not Alex Cooper, it’s Diary of a CEO, Jay Shetty, Joe Rogan, or some right-winger who hates lady aliens in Star Wars. At least Cooper isn’t shilling AI and crypto. Yet.
