Dave Portnoy says Alex Cooper told him she and co-host Sofia Franklyn had a plan to falsely claim sexual harassment at Barstool Sports, a scheme he describes as their exit strategy from binding contracts. In the same memoir, Portnoy admits he deliberately leaked the two women's private feud to the press to break up their partnership and keep the "Call Her Daddy" brand under his roof.
Both admissions appear in Portnoy's new book, "Cancel Me If You Can," and both paint a picture of a media fight in which nobody's hands were clean, but in which the alleged willingness to fabricate harassment claims stands out as the most serious charge by far.
Page Six reported on the memoir's claims in detail, noting that it reached out to Cooper, Franklyn, and Franklyn's then-boyfriend Peter Nelson, a former HBO executive, for comment. None responded.
The timeline Portnoy lays out begins in 2020. He says he offered Cooper and Franklyn a generous package: $500,000 annual salaries, 3.5 percent of all merchandising, full reversion of the "Call Her Daddy" intellectual property at the end of their stint, and 10 to 20 percent of future sales from any alcohol brand launched under the show's name.
Cooper, Portnoy writes, met him on the rooftop of his building and told him she wanted the deal, but that Franklyn would never accept it.
Portnoy recounts Cooper's words in the memoir:
"I love the deal you proposed, and I want to take it. But Sofia is never going to take it."
When Portnoy warned the pair he would sue if they took the podcast to a rival network before their contract expired, he says Cooper revealed the backup plan. In Portnoy's telling:
"Alex claimed to me that they had a plan to say they were both sexually harassed at Barstool."
Portnoy describes this as the pair's "game plan to get out of their contractual obligation to Barstool Sports in the event that I did not relinquish their IP to them and wish them well on their merry way as they jumped ship to a rival podcast network."
These are Portnoy's claims. Cooper has not confirmed or denied them publicly. Franklyn has not responded. But the allegation, that two public figures were willing to weaponize a sexual harassment accusation as a contract-negotiation tool, is the kind of charge that, if true, does real damage to every woman who comes forward with a legitimate complaint.
The memoir is not a one-sided indictment. Portnoy freely admits he played dirty, too. He says he leaked the story of Cooper and Franklyn's internal feud to the New York Post, which published it on May 16, 2020. His stated goal was to destroy their friendship so the podcast, and its IP, would stay at Barstool.
Portnoy writes with striking candor about the strategy:
"I knew at that point the dirty little secret that nobody knew about 'CHD;' the girls hated each other."
He goes further:
"Let's squeeze every last drop out of this fracture for as long as possible. People will pick sides, we'll make merch about it."
And further still:
"For me, the worst thing that could happen was for these two girls to see eye to eye again."
The leak worked. Cooper and Franklyn each believed the other had gone to the press. Portnoy writes that the two "completely severed all communication" and that "the friendship, and the podcast, as we knew it, would never exist again."
An anonymous source described by Page Six as someone "in the know" offered a blunter assessment of the whole saga. Cooper and Franklyn were "extremely difficult from the jump" and "really hard to manage," the source said.
"They were very shrewd. They wanted what they wanted, money and fame, and they would stop at nothing to get it. It was a really dark time [at Barstool]."
After the split, Cooper asked Portnoy for something Franklyn apparently never sought: sole ownership of the "Call Her Daddy" IP. Portnoy says Cooper asked him directly whether she could claim the entire brand if she honored the deal on her own.
She could, and she did. United States Patent and Trademark Office records show Barstool Sports officially transferred the "Call Her Daddy" trademark to Cooper's production company, Bulldozer Productions, in November 2021. That entity merged into TRNDG IP, LLC in March 2025. Cooper serves as president.
The commercial results speak for themselves. Cooper signed a $60 million, three-year deal with Spotify. She later signed a $125 million multi-year contract with SiriusXM. She founded the Unwell media network in 2023, which now runs seven shows beyond "Call Her Daddy." Forbes estimates her annual earnings at $32 million. She is 31 years old.
Franklyn, now 33, launched a separate podcast called "Sofia With An F." She holds no legal rights to the "Call Her Daddy" brand. She is engaged to a man whose name she has not publicly revealed, planning a wedding in Italy, and preparing to release her own memoir, "Daddy Issues," this November. A press release for the book says it "tackles her explosive exit from 'Call Her Daddy,' the severe emotional toll of her fallout with Alex Cooper, and her path to reinvention."
Franklyn told Rolling Stone that the decision to write the book "was one I came to on my own."
"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."
The Portnoy-Cooper-Franklyn saga is not the only public conflict swirling around Cooper's empire. In February 2025, Unwell dropped content creator Alix Earle's "Hot Mess" podcast. By early April 2026, Earle reposted a TikTok video from another creator calling Cooper "so awful" and comparing her to "an ambulance chaser" for profiting from women's vulnerable moments.
Cooper fired back publicly, telling Earle to "stop being 'passive aggressive'" and to "get specific and just say what you've got to say about me. There's no NDA. No one is stopping you. Stop hiding behind other people and just say it yourself." Earle replied: "On it!", then declined to discuss the matter on the "Today" show in May, saying only, "Let's keep the positive vibes going."
The anonymous source told Page Six the pattern is hard to ignore: "This mean girl thing is going to plague Alex Cooper forever."
Another insider, described as someone who has worked within Cooper's orbit, offered a more measured take on the original podcast split. Cooper "always maintains 'Call Her Daddy' was her idea and she did the work," the insider said. "She did edit it, and it always seemed like Alex was the engine and the driver, but Sofia maintained it was a lot of her ideas."
Portnoy is hardly a neutral narrator. In 2021, Business Insider published sexual misconduct allegations against him, allegations he has denied. He sued the outlet and lost. The New York Post reported that Portnoy described that period as "as low as I've been in my life," adding, "I did not have the stomach for it." In his memoir, Portnoy alleges Franklyn helped orchestrate the Business Insider exposé, a claim Franklyn has not publicly addressed.
Portnoy built Barstool Sports from a $30,000 investment and a $20,000 loan from his father into a media property he sold for $551 million before buying it back for one dollar in 2023. His combative public persona is central to the brand. He does not pretend otherwise. "We're the underdog versus the establishment," he told the Post. "So whether that's Barstool versus Goodell, Barstool versus the woke, we didn't really shift or bend."
His descriptions of Franklyn's then-boyfriend Peter Nelson, whom he calls "this Lord Farquaad-looking, factory-reject Ken doll" and "in my eyes quite possibly a human incarnation of Satan", are not exactly the language of a dispassionate memoirist. Portnoy blames Nelson's "overbearing interference" for helping drive the split.
Trademark lawyer Matthew Asbell of Lippes Mathias told Page Six that if Franklyn wanted to challenge Portnoy's claims, she would have to "somehow prove that to be false and damaging." He added a practical caution: "A public response may also give more life to the story and just help Portnoy sell more books."
Cooper's husband and business partner, Matt Kaplan, has drawn his own scrutiny. Vanity Fair published an exposé alleging he created what it described as a toxic work environment. Bloomberg News reported that Kaplan "frequently" yelled at staff. Sources alleged he used words like "stupid" or a slur for the intellectually disabled to refer to employees and threatened to ruin their careers. Female staffers alleged he asked about their sex lives and commented on their appearances. One source claimed Cooper witnessed Kaplan lose his temper and "scream the nastiest things" at people but did not intervene.
None of Cooper, Franklyn, or Nelson responded to Page Six's requests for comment on the memoir's allegations.
Strip away the insults and the media drama, and the core of this story is straightforward. Portnoy alleges two podcast hosts were willing to fabricate sexual harassment claims to break a contract. He also admits he manipulated both women by leaking their private dispute to the press. Cooper took the deal, took the IP, and built a media empire worth tens of millions. Franklyn walked away with nothing from the brand she co-created and is now writing her own version of events.
Portnoy addresses the skeptics directly in his memoir:
"You can say whatever you want about me, but literally nobody has ever said I don't tell the truth 100% of the time. So to all the women who think Sofia is some feminist icon, just remember you are propping up a woman who I believe was willing to lie at the drop of a hat about sexual harassment, which sets all women back."
That last line is the one that matters most, not because Portnoy said it, but because the underlying principle is right. False accusations don't just harm the accused. They make it harder for every real victim who comes forward next. If Cooper and Franklyn had a plan to fake harassment claims, as Portnoy alleges, the public deserves to hear their side. Silence is not a rebuttal.
Accountability is not a one-way street. It runs toward everyone involved, including the man who admits he leaked a story to break up a friendship for profit.
