Alex Cooper's Unwell problem

Despite the apparent fairytale that has become Alex Cooper’s life, even before her picturesque wedding in Riviera Maya in 2024 and her recent pregnancy announcement, things are not looking too good on the career front. Not according to a recent piece in Vanity Fair , which chronicled the nightmarish experiences of dozens of Unwell employees.

The exposé provided a thorough background on the origins of Call Her Daddy, which anyone who has listened to the podcast some time between its 2018 inception and now, or watched the YouTube video Alex Cooper made explaining the rift between her and former cohost, Sofia Frankyln, or watched Hulu’s Call Her Alex documentary, should be at least vaguely familiar with. In short – two friends started a female-centered podcast where they freely discussed sex, it really took off, it got picked up, Sofia’s boyfriend advised them to ditch Barstool Sports, but Alex wasn’t on board. Her refusal led to her securing full ownership and a whopping $60 million dollar Spotify deal.

When her now husband, Hollywood producer Matt Kaplan, came into the fold in 2023, it was after Alex had secured full ownership of the show. And he went from being just a Hollywood producer to becoming her business partner. Together, they advanced the podcast, securing higher-profile guests, including the likes of Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, and doubled the dollar amount of that first Spotify deal, snagging a $125 million dollar deal with SiriusXM.

So it’s not to say that things went to hell the minute Matt touched down. In fact, with his involvement, a lot of great things happened, not only for Alex, but for the many other female podcasters she helped spotlight through the merging of her podcast and his production studio into a new company, Trending, which we now know as Unwell. But, as with most things, it’s a double-sided coin.

The young women interviewed in the Vanity Fair article seem to agree that there’s a stark contrast between who Alex appears to be in public and what she’s actually like in real life. Her public-facing image is that of a woman in leadership who helps usher in new, female talent. But in real life, that persona doesn’t really carry over.

Despite being branded as an all-female company, the women interviewed say Unwell is actually predominantly run by Matt and another man, TJ Marchetti, who are at the helm of the business. And the negative experiences women say they’ve had aren’t just with Matt, but with TJ, too, whom many revealed has been overly aggressive with staffers, uncomfortably flirty with young fans, and in some cases, has requested that photos of them be removed from Instagram due to their lack of attractiveness.

To summarize some of the issues staffers pointed out with Matt, they include the consequences young staffers face, which include panic attacks and anxiety, when they can’t get alignment from the top, his contribution to a toxic work environment, which includes making staffers cry over incorrect balloon placement or misquoting video upload time, him telling people that they are replaceable, screaming heinous things at employees, a lot of which has happened either in front or within earshot of Alex, who they say stayed silent during his many outbursts.

Then there was the issue of flirtation, according to staffers and contractors. Many say Matt would ask them about their sex lives, not totally uncommon given the nature of the podcast in its origins, but that takes on an entirely new meaning when the conversation is being had with your boss’s husband.

“What I found is, behind the scenes, there’s this man, her husband, running around wreaking havoc and making people cry, cower in fear,” one contractor told VF.

I think that sentence about a man running around wreaking havoc just about encapsulates so many of the issues we’ve seen in the past when men have asserted themselves as leaders – not just of companies and businesses but of countries, churches, non-profits and so many other types of groups or organizations. In fact, the start of the divide between Alex and Sofia was quite literally a man inserting himself into the equation, recommending that they find a new home for the podcast. I’m not in a position to say whether that was sound advice or not, but I do think it had a marked impact on the future of the show, which we’ve all watch play out over the last few years.

That’s the thing about men and business. Most businesses are male-dominated spaces. And no matter how feminist a man might say he is, it’s very difficult to find a man who truly believes that business can be a woman’s domain, despite statistics that show how strong women leaders are. That disconnect often leads to this over-assertion of dominance in the workplace which has the exact trickle-down effect these staffers are describing.

On top of that, I imagine that for Matt, it must have been a pretty humbling experience to be courting a woman like Alex, who, despite being over a decade his junior, had a net worth that just about swallowed his whole. It might even have been a bit emasculating. So I am wondering whether his involvement in her business was not only out of a vested interest in wanting to see her succeed and do well, but also to have a stake for himself in her business to help inflate his own sense of worth and also jack his actual worth up a bit.

We’ve seen absolute horror stories as it pertains to couples starting businesses or just being in business together. Look at the 2014 breakup of Tinder cofounders Whitney Wolfe and Justin Mateen. That ended in a sexual harassment lawsuit, with Whitney suing Tinder and its parent companies, saying she faced sexual harassment and was forced out of the startup. It reportedly resulted in a $1 million settlement, Justin’s resignation from the company, and Whitney went on to start her own women-friendly dating app, Bumble, which is estimated to have an annual revenue of nearly $800 million.

And who could forget the sheer chaos of the WeWork scandal, led by husband and wife, Adam and Rebekah Neumann. This disaster led to a show being created to chronicle some of the drama that happened at a company that, had it been managed properly, could have very well been the golden standard of a successful co-work company.

Not so much to defend Alex and moreso to empathize with her, she’s in a tough spot. I truly doubt that her silence in those instances where he’s yelling at and scolding and humiliating employees is an admission that he is doing the right thing. I think she’s in fight or flight mode, trying to weigh her responsibilities as a wife or a boss, and it’s hard to think straight when someone is literally screaming so loud you can’t hear yourself think. And I think that’s by design. Matt knows that the louder he is, the less room there is for her to think and speak.

We’ve seen this in so many toxic leaders – you can’t get a word in edgewise. It’s a strategy. And it’s working. For him, anyway. But for her, it’s a shame to see the empire that Alex built on feminism, raw honesty and community being chipped away at by these rumours of mismanagement. But there is nothing at all surprising about it. Because this is precisely what happens when you allow the very thing you’ve spoken so much about come between you and the thing you’ve built from the ground up. And while I’m hoping that this doesn’t end the way we’ve seen so many other things collapse, this is going to be an uphill battle for Alex to come back from.