Alex Cooper of ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast debuts her Vegas-style live tour at MGM this week
‘Father Cooper” is back in town. Time called her “arguably the most successful woman in podcasting.” Rolling Stone called her Gen Z’s Barbara Walters. “Call Her Daddy” podcast founder and host Alex Cooper, 29, a Boston University graduate, returns to Boston Nov. 3 for the opening night of her first (nearly sold-out) live tour, the Unwell Tour.
Doubling as a bachelorette party before her wedding to film producer Matt Kaplan, 39, Cooper’s tour is billed as a “reinvention” of podcast tours. Expect different segments, including guest celebrity appearances, “Magic Mike”-style moments, and a Vegas-level finale. And yes, she announced on Instagram, her dogs are coming.
“Visually, this show is beautiful,” said Cooper. With large backdrop panels that incorporate AI, “you’re going to be in the college locker room with me as I’m discussing my college days. You’re gonna feel like you’re being transported into these worlds.”
In 2022, “Call Her Daddy” was the second-most-listened-to podcast globally and the most-listened-to femalehosted podcast, according to Spotify’s Wrapped data. A roughly $60 million deal with Spotify, inked in June 2021, makes Cooper the highest-paid woman podcaster on the platform.
The show offers the kind of pep talks and advice that an aspiring-therapist best friend might provide. “CHD” guest stars have big names: Jane Fonda, Post Malone, and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others.
“Sexuality, money, not being able to stand up for ourselves, confidence, mental health — anything you think about when you’re alone in the shower. Come to ‘Call Her Daddy’ and there’s gonna be a conversation elaborating on it, and you’re not going to feel alone,” said Cooper.
Critics dismiss her podcast, particularly the first episodes, as excessively raunchy, but Cooper says, “I’m so proud of those early days because the amount of women that have come up to me and been like ‘I feel so sexually liberated from those days of you going there and talking about things that I had never heard about, [and just] hearing a woman have no shame discussing sex.’”
Cooper wants the Daddy Gang audience — mostly women ages 18 to 26— to meet the world well-equipped. Recent episodes include, “Confronting a Controlling Boyfriend,” and “It’s Time to Manage Your Finances.”
“It’s time to want more for ourselves,” Cooper says at the end of her “Toxic Bootcamp” video, an episode about both the difficulty and importance of leaving toxic relationships.
Recently, in “The 5 Year Anniversary of ‘CHD,’” Cooper shared stories from fans about how her show has helped them leave abusive relationships, or jobs they weren’t happy with. Other fans report having their first orgasms and embracing their sexuality after following Cooper’s advice.
If a business or creative decision doesn’t benefit the Daddy Gang, it’s a no-go. “There’s a reason I’m not on my Instagram holding up products,” said Cooper in the anniversary episode. She reflected on the time a male actor “CHD” guest star made her uncomfortable. “I just got immediate weird vibes from him.”
She didn’t release the episode. “I got so much backlash and pressure and threats of like, ‘Well this is who else we rep and they’ll never come on your show if you don’t air it.’ … And I was like, ‘I don’t care...’ I’m not gonna give him hype for being an [expletive] to me and the Daddy Gang.”
But Cooper says she has not always been confident. She struggled in school. Film was her escape. “I felt so safe when I was creating things, so I always knew I wanted to do this, but it started as a really lonely thing.”
Her mother, a psychologist, provided a home base. “Talking about mental health was a prerequisite,” said Cooper. If Cooper was bullied at school, they would talk about it.
”My mom would push me into rooms and be like, ‘Go talk to your teacher. Go talk to your coach who’s like a 65-year-old man, and stand up for yourself. I don’t think a lot of young women are raised that way. It’s like, ‘Be quiet and be a good girl,’ and my mom was like, ‘Get in that room and go for it.’”
Cooper brings that mentality into her work, but is mindful that her audience includes diverse perspectives. A tab on her webpage, comically titled “Free Nudes,” is entirely devoted to information about abortion care and voting access. Last year in October, Cooper released an episode called “An Abortion Story,” but edited it in a way that “if you were raised pro-life, I don’t want you to turn it off,” Cooper said. “I don’t want you to feel excluded.”
“You can come here and not feel judged. All day, [women are] judged on our looks, our merit, on what we’re doing, on our social status, on our clothes, our hair color, our weight. It’s so exhausting.”
Cooper keeps her immediate team small — four people small. When you DM her on Instagram, she said, she sees it. “I am constantly reading [fans’] DMs and being like, OK, I’ve seen a lot of messages about that, maybe I need to do a segment, whether it’s eating disorders, whether it’s loneliness in your 20s.”
Her approach, she says, differs from what people may consider “more traditional media” such as “60 Minutes” or Oprah. But she believes that new versions of media, like “CHD,” should be celebrated.
“Some people may be looking at me like, ‘Oh she’s just a hot blonde girl that got famous because she was talking about sex,’” said Cooper. A Boston University film professor told her, “‘You will never be taken seriously in this industry because of the way you look.’”
”That just lit a fire under my [expletive] even more of like, watch what I’m gonna do.”
Cooper is clear: Her success is no accident. “I have been doing this, and wanting to do this, my whole life. I’m an animal with my business, and I don’t take any [expletive]. I have such a passion for it. And I think sometimes people don’t want to hear that from a woman.”