It’s been almost six years since the Call Her Daddy breakup rocked the podcasting world. And somehow, there’s still more that people don’t know about the hit show’s jaw-dropping dissolution.
Launched in 2018, Call Her Daddy experienced a meteoric rise
in the entertainment world, becoming the most popular show at Barstool Sports and racking up millions of weekly downloads. Co-hosted by self-proclaimed best friends Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn, Call Her Daddy reveled in its shock value, with fans piling in weekly to hear raunchy takes on dating, sexual favors, and feminism. The clear draw was the rapport between the hosts, so listeners were understandably shocked in 2020 when news broke that, after months of contract negotiations with Barstool and its owner, Dave Portnoy, the podcast duo would be splitting up. Cooper kept the show — and Franklyn was left with nothing.
The story has been discussed ad nauseam online in the years since, with each party rallying fans around their own version of events. (Cooper claimed Franklyn wanted to leave Barstool and was willing to blow up the show to do it. Franklyn said she tried to make negotiations work and was blindsided when she was cut out of the deal.) Cooper has declined to comment several times to Rolling Stone, but in several episodes of Call Her Daddy, her stories about Franklyn and the split have moved from scorched earth accusations of lying to vague acknowledgments of Franklyn’s existence — a position of power aided by her $60 million Spotify deal and reigning role as queen of podcasting. (Portnoy, in a past comment to Rolling Stone, claimed Franklyn “can’t get her story straight.”)
But in her new memoir Daddy Issues, out Tuesday, Franklyn is finally telling the story from her perspective. The book goes through her early childhood in Utah, a failed career as an analyst at Morgan Stanley, the chance meeting with Cooper that led to Call Her Daddy, and the highly publicized breakup of a friendship and its painful aftermath.
“The decision [to write the book] was one I came to on my own,” Franklyn told Rolling Stone in February. “Six years ago, I was reeling from an experience I didn’t understand. I needed to grow up and be free of ego as much as humanly possible.”
Here are the biggest bombshells from Daddy Issues:
Franklyn’s early years and time in the spotlight were dominated by heavy alcohol and drug use
On Call Her Daddy, Cooper and Franklyn were open about their hard-partying ways. In fact, reckless nights out in New York City fueled some of their most popular stories. But Franklyn reveals in the memoir that she spent much of her early adulthood abusing drugs and alcohol. She was arrested for using a fake I.D., then twice for underage drinking. In one particularly shocking story that she told on the podcast and recalled in the book, Franklyn accidentally smoked meth, thinking she was simply doing cocaine. When a friend offered her heroin, it served as a wake-up call — and part of the impetus to move to New York City.
Though she was perhaps a bit more careful about the drugs she accepted from strangers, Franklyn kept many of the same partying patterns when she moved. But in Daddy Issues, she notes that many times she went out to avoid feelings about her complicated childhood family dynamics, her move, career, and where she was in life.
She met Cooper in 2018 after a chance encounter with a girl in a rideshare. The woman knew of two people needing a third roommate, and when Franklyn complained about her rent, offered her their numbers. Franklyn and Cooper became an instant duo and began partying together. Considering Franklyn had virtually no friends in the city at that point, she needed both a support system and a distraction, she wrote, and Cooper’s all-encompassing nature answered both.
Cooper’s best friend Lauren, who was also their third roommate, tried to warn Franklyn about Cooper’s worst tendencies early on
Looking back, Franklyn said in the book, there were several warning signs that her relationship with Cooper might end poorly. The two became what they called a “package deal” in all things: living together, going out together, instigating poor choices with toxic boyfriends together, and working on a podcast together.
But one night, their third roommate and Cooper’s childhood best friend, Lauren, warned Franklyn that Cooper was using her to help elevate her own status.
“She uses you because you’re hot, to like, go to parties and stuff,” Lauren said, according to the book.
In the book, Franklyn wrote that Lauren thought it was especially telling how Cooper essentially “tossed” her aside once Franklyn came into the picture. “You showed up and it was like I never existed.”
Franklyn wanted to negotiate ownership of Call Her Daddy before they ever signed to Barstool
Cooper and Franklyn started Call Her Daddy in 2018 as an experiment with the company Podible. But by the time they recorded their fourth episode, Cooper had a DM from Portnoy wanting to sign the two to his network.
According to Franklyn, she and Cooper were excited about the contract Barstool Sports offered them. The three-year deal had a clear pay structure: $75,000 for the first year, $85,000 for the second, and $100,000 for the third year, including $2,500 bonuses for every 10 percent increase in show downloads. The only part of the contract Franklyn had a problem with, she wrote, was the ownership. In the deal, Barstool acquired the Call Her Daddy IP, including the name and its social media accounts. Essentially, Barstool would own Call Her Daddy outright, with Franklyn and Cooper simply acting as talent.
Franklyn discussed the deal with her mom, she wrote, who suggested she reach out to other media companies to see if someone wanted to offer them more. But Franklyn said Cooper wanted to complete the paperwork quickly — so Franklyn signed on the dotted line.
Cooper allegedly tried to get Franklyn fired — then used a rough night at a Barstool holiday party to negotiate a secret raise
In Daddy Issues, Franklyn wrote that “insane anxiety” at a Barstool Christmas Party led to an intense fight with Cooper. During the party, Franklyn remembers feeling intensely out of place with her coworkers, which led her to drink heavily.
“The second I wake up the next morning the worst feeling comes over me. I have no idea how I even got home. The only thing I am certain of is my dread,” Franklyn wrote. “Every part of my body knows I’ve done something very wrong.”
When Franklyn tried to speak with Cooper about the night, it was clear she was upset with her. After prodding, Cooper told her that she was “rude” and “aggressive” at the party — enough that Portnoy wanted to fire her. When Franklyn desperately tried to apologize and offered to speak to Portnoy directly to try and rectify the situation, Cooper instead allegedly encouraged her to see a psychiatrist recommended by her family. At the suggestion of the doctor, Franklyn started taking naltrexone, a drug used to curb alcohol and opioid addiction.
But when Franklyn eventually attempted to discuss the night with Portnoy and the Barstool executive team, no one seemed as worried as Cooper had implied, Franklyn wrote.
Later on, Franklyn found out that Cooper had gone directly to Portnoy after the party and attempted to get Franklyn fired. When that didn’t work, she refused to continue the series without a raise.
“[Cooper] was like, ‘If I have to put up with her, I need more money,’” Cooper’s friend and a former podcast employee, Muji, reportedly told Franklin. “So she got the raise.”
Franklyn and Cooper asked Barstool for $1 million per year in a new contract
In 2020, despite their three-year term not yet being over, Cooper and Franklyn pushed to renegotiate their contract early when it became clear that the podcast was not only one of the most financially successful shows at the network, but in the podcasting industry as a whole. Their legal team projected that they brought in $11 million from the show alone, which didn’t even include merch sales. Their contracts at the time meant they were getting constant $2,500 bonuses for their rising downloads. But they felt their yearly take-homes didn’t reflect their worth, especially since the Barstool Sports deal prevented them from taking on other lucrative opportunities, like a joint book deal, alcohol sponsorships, new social media accounts, or a podcast tour.
They decided to send Barstool an email with their new contract proposal. Along with their desire to do live events and alcohol partnerships, they also asked for more money — a lot more money.
“50/50 split of all revenue derived from Barstool’s exploitation of the property (i.e. advertisers, sponsors, merch, etc.),” they wrote, and a “minimum guarantee — $1M each, per year.”
During the Barstool Sports negotiations, Cooper and Franklyn discussed starting over with a new show called The Fathers.
The heart of the argument was always the IP of Call Her Daddy. Barstool Sports owned the show and its archive, which meant that if a new deal fell through, Franklyn and Cooper might not be able to use the brand they had turned into a household name, and the network could technically replace them with new hosts.
At a weekend retreat used to get on the same page about business, Franklyn said the two decided that staying together was the ultimate goal.
“Seeing her across from me, it feels like we’ll be sisters forever, and we say as much, high off the “founders are like married couples” binder,” Franklyn wrote. “We’re being corny as shit, but it’s because we’re both blissed out on the plan and our future — we don’t know how Barstool will respond, but we know that staying together is more important than losing the IP, or whatever they may threaten. What is the name without us?”
The two agreed that, in the worst-case scenario, they would depart without the Call Her Daddy IP and start a new show. They decided to call it The Fathers.
When Call Her Daddy officially split, Portnoy offered Franklyn her own show
After months of attempting to come to agreeable terms with each other and Barstool, Franklyn’s worst-case scenario became a reality. Cooper negotiated a deal in which she kept the show on Barstool Sports and ousted Franklyn.
In the days before, Portnoy called Franklyn to discuss the situation, revealing that Cooper met with him separately and proposed continuing on the show without her. In return, he offered Franklyn her own podcast.
“She came to me with a plan, and I needed an episode. There’s no clear favorite. You could always have your own show, and we promote the shit out of it like we did with Call Her Daddy. I think it would be huge,” he said, according to the book. When Franklyn confirmed that this would mean Call Her Daddy would belong to Alex alone, Portnoy continued, “she told me that you’re never going to sign and that she got a different lawyer because you’re trying to blow up the deal.”
“According to her, you’re the one that’s been dragging this on, and she’s been ready to sign this thing,” he added.
Even after Portnoy attempted to reassure her with the promise of “your own show, your own editor, and anything else you need,” Franklyn wrote, she felt too burned by Barstool to continue working with them.
The fall of Call Her Daddy sent Franklyn on a downward spiral
The split — of both the podcast and friendship — happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, and Franklyn and her then-boyfriend, Peter Nelson, moved in with her mother in Utah. Several people tried to get involved in the breakup, including an attempted mediation from music executive Scooter Braun. But Franklyn’s multiple attempts to talk to Cooper, both through legal representation and personal texts, went unanswered, she wrote.
Instead, Franklyn said Cooper locked her out of all the social media accounts and then posted “The Truth About Call Her Daddy,” a 52-minute YouTube video where Cooper called Franklyn a “liability” and blamed her for the show’s split. It started a vicious online narrative: that Franklyn was greedy for money and Cooper was a victim who lost her friend.
Franklyn wrote in Daddy Issues that because of the drama and media speculation that came along with it, she became withdrawn and paranoid. It took her months to figure out how to respond to Cooper — and even when she started a new podcast, Sofia with an F (which she proudly wrote that she was offered $500,001 to start, a dollar more than Cooper’s first solo deal with Barstool) — Cooper’s actions clouded everything.
“I wonder if anyone in the history of business breakups — like Mark Zuckerberg vs. the Winklevoss twins — has not only stolen someone’s million-dollar idea but decimated them online?” Franklyn wrote. “Is taking my livelihood and my reputation not enough?”
The stress led her to return to drinking and partying — and eventually, she wrote, it caused her to cheat on Nelson, which contributed to their eventual breakup.
Franklyn also wrote about finding out she was pregnant, and getting an abortion one day before a family trip to the Amalfi Coast for her birthday. “How can I bring new life into the world when I don’t live a life worth keeping myself?” she wrote.
While there, Cooper announced the launch of her new media company, Unwell. She got the name from a story that Franklyn told on Call Her Daddy.
Cooper allegedly threatened to sue Franklyn after she read her book proposal
Franklyn’s work reclaiming her life following the Call Her Daddy debacle wasn’t easy — or glamorous. In her memoir, she recalls discovering the existence of Cooper’s line of Unwell beverages while recovering from norovirus, standing in a CVS aisle bewildered with dry vomit clumps still in her hair. But there was a freedom in that moment, Franklyn wrote, the idea that Cooper’s fame and power had eclipsed her own so thoroughly that there’s no longer any need to compete.
But while Franklyn wrote that she learned to stop caring about what Cooper does — blocking her number, her accounts, and mentions of her on her socials — that clearly isn’t reciprocal. According to Franklyn, her book agent received an irate call from Matt Kaplan, Cooper’s husband, the day of her book announcement, threatening to sue. It was the first time Franklyn had heard from her former best friend in six years.
“I remember this feeling of powerlessness. Alex rearranging my life with no acknowledgment. My life being taken, overnight. On the scoreboard of Alex vs. Sofia, Alex won. I cannot fathom her trying to do it again,” Franklyn wrote. “I feel bulletproof… something born out of a dark place. For the first time I have something Alex wants. Our story. My story.”
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