“Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper has addressed her former boss Dave Portnoy including anecdotes about her Barstool Sports tenure in his memoir, Cancel Me If You Can.
Portnoy, 49, claimed in his book, published in June, that he allegedly would have been the subject of sexual harassment accusations if he didn’t allow Cooper, 31, out of her contract. (Cooper originally launched “Call Her Daddy” under the Barstool umbrella with then-cohost Sofia Franklyn. She went on to sign an exclusive deal with Spotify in 2021 before building her own brand.)
“I have not [responded to the claims before]. I’ve been pregnant,” Cooper stated on CNBC’s Squawk Box during an interview on Wednesday, August 12. “I’m busy building a child.”
Cooper, who is currently expecting her first baby with husband Matt Kaplan, played coy about the validity of Portnoy’s claims.
“I think, whenever I see Dave online, we all enjoy his banter,” she said. “He is a very entertaining person, and I have a very great and complicated relationship with Dave. He gave me my start in this industry, and I will never not be grateful to him.”
Cooper said that she hasn’t read Cancel Me If You Can, but she recalls the situation differently.
“I remember seeing, obviously, [and] getting tagged in those things and that’s not how I remember it at all,” she alleged. “I also am like, ‘Dave’s got his version, I got my version, and we’re all good.’”
When asked to share her version of events, Cooper stated with a laugh, “No.”
“I am in my mother era. I’m no drama right now,” she shared on Wednesday. “We’re here to talk business.”
Cooper appeared on CNBC on behalf of her Unwell Media Network, which she owns and operates with her husband. The organization was recently valued at $500 million following an investment from Patrick Whitesell’s firm.
“Matt and I, with Unwell, knew that we wanted to take on investment at some point,” she said. “Obviously, when we started the company, we put in our own money to start it and we’ve been profitable since day one. This decision wasn’t about needing [a] cash infusion, it was about wanting to partner with someone who could help us go to the next level with acquisitions and investments.”
According to Cooper, her goals “aligned” with Whitesell’s to foster a potentially successful company relationship.
“Unwell is a Gen Z, female-centric media company comprised of dozens of podcasts, we have a film and television studio, we have live events, we have consumer products, we have a charitable foundation and we have a creative agency,” she added. “With this flywheel approach we’ve built, we’ve got to the point where we’re profitable, we’re making money and we now want to start looking at acquisitions and investments of … new IPs [or] different talent relationships [among others].”
