Sofia Franklyn is questioning Alex Cooper‘s take on their falling-out while bringing Dave Portnoy into the mix.
“No dude is in my ear telling me what to do,” Franklyn, 34, says in Us‘ exclusive clip from the Tuesday, November 10, episode of Amanda Hirsch‘s “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast. “Alex makes such a convincing YouTube video and she brings up Scooter Braun and she brings up my agent. All these men are trying to run her show.”
Franklyn explains that she saw the situation differently.
“You literally ran to Dave and rolled over,” she claims. “You gave Dave what he wanted. Also none of those people were doing that [to me].”
Cooper, 32, and Franklyn created and cohosted the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, which launched at Barstool Sports in 2018. Two years later, Cooper and Franklyn’s friendship came to an end amid contract negotiations.
Barstool founder Portnoy, 49, previously claimed he heard rumors that the show was being shopped around by Franklyn’s then-boyfriend, Peter Nelson. Cooper, meanwhile, has said that Portnoy offered the women a $500,000 deal that included ownership of the show.
In the Call Her Alex docuseries, which was released in June 2025, Cooper claimed that Franklyn didn’t want to take the deal. Cooper agreed to the terms and got full ownership of “Call Her Daddy,” which remained with Barstool Sports until 2021 before moving exclusively to Spotify. Cooper later signed a $125 million deal with SiriusXM and created her own platform, the Unwell Network.
Cooper further alleged in her docuseries that her friendship with Franklyn started to fracture before the contract debacle. “It became really difficult to enjoy the process,” she said. “It was the classic you think you see something online, and people genuinely believed we were like sisters, but our relationship was so awful.”
When Portnoy released his memoir, Cancel Me If You Can, earlier this year, he admitted to leaking the story about the drama between Cooper and Franklyn.
Dave Portnoy shared the advice he offered former employee Alex Cooper before the exposé about her Unwell Network went live. “We talked, she knew the article was coming,” Portnoy, 49, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting his debut memoir, Cancel Me If You Can. “I’m like, there’s nothing you can say to Vanity Fair. The […]
“It worked perfectly: Alex and Sofia completely severed all communication. They each believed the other had leaked the story,” Portnoy wrote. “The friendship, and the podcast as we knew it, would never exist again. They hated each other.”
Franklyn is now offering her version of events in her own memoir, Daddy Issues, which hits shelves Tuesday, November 10.
“I think the internet sees me as one way, which I love and is a part of me,” Franklyn said during a June 2025 episode of the “Sofia With an F” podcast. “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 had this really hard exterior because I was so scared.”
She added: “I’m still kind of trying to crawl out of that, but I think in order to do that, I should be really open about it.”
