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Alex Cooper, the person behind the Call Her Daddy podcast, has built an empire by discussing taboo topics, but one story has remained largely untold until now. The 30-year-old media mogul has recently opened up for the first time about the "traumatic experience" that ended her Division I soccer career, that ultimately set her on her path to podcasting stardom.
According to Hot New Hip Hop, years before she became one of the most influential voices in podcasting, Alex Cooper was an avid athlete who dreamed of playing professional soccer. She juggled her passion for content creation with a love for sports, which landed her a place on the Division I team at Boston University, where she played from 2013 to 2015.
However, she left the team in 2016 due to an "extremely painful" experience she encountered. On June 3, 2025, Cooper released the trailer of her upcoming docuseries Call Her Alex, in which she stated:
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“I experienced something extremely painful. It was all taken away from me.”
Though she did not specify the incident, her emotional delivery hints at the lasting impact it had on her.
Alex Cooper's previous statements explored
According to Page Six, Alex Cooper hinted at this “traumatic experience” in previous interviews, at one point implying it had been related to abuse by her Boston University soccer coach. In a 2023 Cosmopolitan cover story, she described it as something that “took such a toll on [her] mental health.”
“Recently, I reconnected with a lot of the people that I played soccer with who were around when things were happening and it’s been pretty cathartic. I met up with one of my teammates in Santa Monica who I hadn’t seen since we graduated — we didn’t even say hi, we just both started crying," she said.
Cooper also emphasized on the fact that she was not suffering alone. She told the outlet:
"There’s another woman that went through it with me, and we finally saw each other recently and it’s just wild to talk about it together. I’m not the only person something like this has happened to."
More about Alex Cooper's podcast and upcoming docuseries
According to People, losing soccer left Alex Cooper unmoored, but it also incited what she described as a “desperate rush” to discover a new mission. That search led her to podcasting, a field then dominated by male voices.
As reported by Deadline, in 2018, Alex Cooper introduced her podcast, Call Her Daddy, under Barstool Sports. The show quickly became a cultural phenomenon, and landed an exclusive $60 million deal with Spotify.
Now married to producer Matt Kaplan and running her own media network, Alex Cooper is set to revisit the experience in her upcoming docuseries, Call Her Alex. According to People, the two-part series will include never-before-seen footage of her early life, the tumultuous initial days of Call Her Daddy, and her ascent to being one of podcasting’s highest-paid stars.
As per Deadline, Call Her Alex will release on Hulu on June 10, 2025, following its premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 8.
