RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Add Page Six on Google Alex Cooper was in the hot seat for a change.
The "Call Her Daddy" podcast host was awkwardly grilled on Dave Portnoy's bombshell claim that she planned to break her Barstool Sports contract with “fake” sexual harassment claims .
“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,” Cooper began, after she was asked whether the allegation is true during a CNBC interview Wednesday.
“He gave me my start in this industry and I will never not be grateful to him.”
The Unwell Network founder admitted that she hasn't read Portnoy's memoir, " Cancel Me If You Can ," in which he makes the allegation, but she remembers "getting tagged in those things" online.
"That’s not how I remember that at all," Cooper insisted. "But I also am like, Dave’s got his version, and I’ve got my version, and we’re all good.”
When Cooper was asked if she wanted to share her “version” of the story, the soon-to-be mom responded, “No. I’m in my mother era. I’m no drama right now. We’re here to talk business.”
As Page Six previously reported, Portnoy claimed in his memoir that Cooper and her former "Call Her Daddy" co-host, Sofia Franklyn, had a "game plan" to “fake” sexual harassment claims in order to get out of their contractual obligation to Barstool Sports.
According to the businessman, he met with the women once he learned they were unhappy with their contract and proposed “the most generous offer in Barstool history” that would have made both Cooper and Franklyn instant millionaires.
But later, Portnoy allegedly got a phone call from Cooper asking if she could meet with him again — without Franklyn.
“‘I love the deal you proposed, and I want to take it. But Sofia is never going to take it,'” the Barstool boss claimed Cooper told him in his memoir.
”’Okay,’ I said. ‘You guys realize I’ll sue you if you take the podcast to another network before your contract is out, right?’ Alex claimed to me that they had a plan to say they were both sexually harassed at Barstool,” he alleged.
“That was it. That was their 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.”
Portnoy wrote in his book that though his company had been attacked “for making sexist jokes,” it had “never been accused of inappropriate workplace conduct.”
“But had they decided to go that route, even though it was patently untrue, it would have been a tough fight for us to win in the court of public opinion. Nobody would have believed my side of the story,” he penned.
Franklyn left the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in 2020, claiming that “contract negotiations fell apart.”
She went on to create her own podcast, “Sofia with an F.”
Franklyn will address her fallout with Cooper in her forthcoming memoir, “Daddy Issues.”
As for Cooper, she left Barstool Sports in June 2021, signing an exclusive multi-year distribution deal with Spotify worth $60 million and taking the "Call Her Daddy" IP with her. Then, in August 2024, she jumped from Spotify to SiriusXM in a reported $125 million deal .
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