What we learned from ‘Call Her Alex': Alex Cooper opens up about alleged sexual harassment, childhood bullying and her podcaster beginnings

Yahoo

a day ago

With the premiere of Call Her Alex, Hulu's two-part documentary charting the rise of famous podcaster Alex Cooper, fans are given a more candid look at the woman behind the microphone — and a multimillion-dollar media empire.
The documentary charts Cooper's origin story, from a bullied middle schooler who found solace in making home videos in her basement to her complicated history as a Division 1 soccer player at Boston University, and then to the early beginnings of Call Her Daddy, which she started with her ex-friend Sofia Franklyn. Between Cooper's vulnerable recollections of her childhood, college life and the start of her podcasting career, the documentary features scenes of the 30-year-old media mogul during her 2023-2024 Unwell tour.
Here we take a look at the biggest takeaways from Call Her Alex.
While Cooper had an easy time befriending girls, she remembers that growing up, she was often bullied by the boys in her class for the way she looked.
'I was so scared of boys because of the way they treated me,' she said. 'I had a lot of comments of like, 'You look like a skeleton.' Boys coming up to me being like, 'Oh my gosh, her legs are so frail.' Always making comments about my body and my hair. I'm naturally a redhead, so kids would say, 'You're a ginger, you don't have a soul,' 'firecrotch,' 'you're disgusting,' 'no one wants to touch you.''
All Cooper wanted, she said, was to be liked.
'I hated myself,' Cooper admitted. 'All I wanted them to do was like me, so that I could feel what my friends were feeling at sleepovers of, like, being giddy on AIM messenger, like messaging the boys. I want to be a part of feeling wanted and desired. I was deeply hurt, but I hid it.'
Between 2013 to 2015, the Call Her Daddy podcaster played Division 1 soccer at Boston University. While she was initially excited about joining the team and being around so many other women, her experience was eventually ruined by Nancy Feldman, the team's head coach, who Cooper said paid her unwanted and inappropriate attention.
'I came in ready to work. I was determined to make a name for myself on that field. So when my coach started to pay extra attention to me, I figured it was probably because I was playing well,' Cooper said.
Boston University did not immediately respond to Yahoo Entertainment's request for comment.
Her relationship with Feldman 'shifted' in her sophomore year.
'I started to notice her really starting to fixate on me, way more than any other teammate of mine,' she said. 'It was confusing because the focus … was all based in her wanting to know who I was dating, her making comments about my body and her always wanting to be alone with me.'
Cooper recalled a time during the preseason, in which Feldman requested to see her in her office.
'She would pull me in, just be staring at me, sit next to me on the couch, put her hand on my thigh,' Cooper alleged. 'I felt so deeply uncomfortable. … I was attending BU on a full tuition scholarship. If I didn't follow this woman's rules, I was gone.'
Feldman, according to Cooper, once voiced disdain that she had spent the night off campus.
'My coach found out that I got dropped off on campus by a guy I was seeing, and she called for a private meeting between us,' said Cooper. 'She asks me, 'Did you have sex last night?' And I'm like, 'I'm sorry, what?' And she's like, 'I don't know if you should be sleeping off campus.' And I'm like, 'All of the other girls on my team sleep off campus.''
Cooper said that as an apparent result of her sleeping off campus, Feldman decided to bench her during the NCAA's first round women's soccer game against St. John's.
'She wouldn't play me, she was holding me back. She would try to punish me, and it made no sense to everyone else,' Cooper said. When she was finally allowed to play, Cooper recalled, she scored a goal to tie, and eventually led the team to a 2-1 victory over St. John's.
'We walked the entire length of the soccer field after we had just won this huge game. It is dead silence. She will not say one word to me, and then she does the interview — and she will not say my name,' she said. 'It was this psychotic game of, 'You want to play? Tell me about your sex life.' 'I have to drive you to your night class. Get in the car with me, alone.''
Cooper and her parents, Bryan and Laurie, eventually told the dean of athletics at Boston University of Feldman's alleged sexual harassment. The university's representatives, however, refused to fire Feldman. Cooper, as a result, decided to quit the team in her junior year, but was still able to keep her full tuition scholarship.
'No investigation, nothing. Within five minutes, they had entirely dismissed everything I had been through,' she said.
Feldman, who began coaching Boston University's women's soccer team in 1995, retired in 2022.
At the end of the first episode of Call Her Alex, Cooper revisited the Boston University campus and soccer field.
'I felt a lot of anger. Anger at my coach, anger at my school and anger at the system that allowed this to happen,' she said. 'It's just hard to look at this 'cause of how it was, like, all taken away from me. It just feels f***ed. I don't think anyone could've prepared me for the lasting effects that came from this experience.'
Cooper, while tearfully walking on the field, reflected on the pain Feldman inflicted on her — and the determination she felt upon finishing college.
'She turned something that I loved so much into something extremely painful. When I look back at that time in my life, I was scared, hopeless. I had no resources and no options. And the minute I left that campus, I was so determined to find a way where no one could ever silence me again,' she said.
To help get Call Her Daddy launched, Cooper enlisted the help of her former roommate Sofia Franklyn, with whom she lived in New York City. Cooper had asked Franklyn if she wanted to be part of the podcast, and she agreed. Together, the pair began recording episodes of CHD, which focused on their candid conversations about their sexual exploits as women.
Cooper and Franklyn eventually inked a three-year, $75,000 base salary each with Barstool Sports, a digital media company, which took over ownership of the podcast in 2018. Their relationship, according to Cooper, was more strained than the podcast would make it seem.
'It was the classic, you think you see something online and people genuinely believe we were like sisters. But our relationship was so awful,' she said.
When it came time to renegotiate their contract with Barstool, Cooper and Franklyn couldn't come to an agreement, which led to Cooper taking over the podcast solo. The Boston University alum continued to record the podcast under Barstool until June 2021, before inking a $60 million, three-year deal with Spotify in July 2021.
Franklyn addressed the Call Her Daddy drama on her Instagram Story.
'You all know my past. Thank u for being a part of my journey…this year is about letting MYSELF out of the Chd/Barstool Box & being my grown, complex self,' she wrote on June 10. 'Less scared, less performative. More present & vulnerable.'
During the June 5 episode of her own podcast, Sofia with an F, Franklyn opened up about wanting to put the CHD era behind her.
'I think the internet sees me as one way, which I love and is a part of me,' Franklyn said. 'There's always going to be the Call Her Daddy, Barstool thing, right? Sexual, ditzy, which I mean, I am those things. I can be sexual and ditzy, and smart at the same time, you know? But also, I think after the drama, I like had this really hard exterior because I was so scared.'