Alex Cooper doesn’t refute Dave Portnoy’s claim ‘Call Her Daddy’ hosts planned to accuse Barstool of sexual harassment

Perhaps the most serious claim in Dave Portnoy’s recently published memoir came in his retelling of the departure of the Call Her Daddy podcast from Barstool Sports.

In the book, and in a Wall Street Journal profile ahead of its release, Portnoy alleged that the show’s hosts, Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn, threatened to claim that they were sexually harassed while working for Barstool if he did not let them out of their contracts.

Portnoy wrote in his book that Franklin’s then-boyfriend Peter Nelson attempted to orchestrate the show’s exit from Barstool while the hosts were still under contract. In Portnoy’s telling, he offered Cooper and Franklyn each a $500,000 salary, a cut of merch sales, and ownership of the show’s IP. Barstool, in exchange, would get rights to any alcohol brand the company launched off the CHD name.

When the two slow-rolled Portnoy’s offer, he said he told them he would sue if they broke their contracts. In response, Portnoy wrote, they told him they “had a plan to say they were both sexually harassed at Barstool.”

While Cooper later accepted the terms before ultimately leaving, Franklyn continued to play hardball. Eventually, the two of them split, and Cooper took over CHD and turned it into a solo-hosted celebrity interview show.

In an appearance Wednesday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Cooper about Portnoy’s allegation. She did not deny it, instead saying “that’s not how I remember that at all” and stating she is “no drama” while pregnant.

“Whenever I see Dave online, we all enjoy his banter. He is a very entertaining person, and I have a very great and complicated relationship with Dave,” she said. “He gave me my start in this industry and I will never not be grateful to him.”

“I haven’t read the book, but I remember seeing, obviously getting tagged in those things, and that’s not how I remember that at all. But I also am like, Dave’s got his version, and I’ve got my version, and we’re all good.”

In Dave Portnoy’s memoir, he claimed that the Call Her Daddy co-hosts were planning to accuse Barstool of sexual harassment to get out of their contracts.

Alex Cooper’s response: pic.twitter.com/0nRWm7ynlU

— Wall Street Rollup (@WallStRollup) August 12, 2026

Pressed by Sorkin as to whether she would share her “version,” Cooper demurred that she was “in my mother era, I’m no drama right now.”

Previously, Cooper shared in a documentary that she was sexually harassed by her soccer coach at Boston University. In response, nearly 100 other former members of the program signed a letter in support of the coach.

This year, Cooper and her husband and business partner, Matt Kaplan, were accused of creating a toxic workplace at their company, Unwell Media. Cooper has called these allegations “a smear campaign.”