Sofia Franklyn tells all

It’s been less than a week since the release of Sofia Franklyn’s book, Daddy Issues, but the stir it has caused has been immense. And of course, Dave Portnoy has carved out a spot for himself right at the centre of it all. He appeared on The Toast this week to discuss the book and some of the allegations made against him in it. And, as he has in the past, he shared his insights into the Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn split that left Cooper the sole host of the mega popular Call Her Daddy podcast. But we’ll get back to his role in all of this momentarily.

Celebrities and podcasters like Bethenny Frankel and Heather McDonald are weighing in and the book has even become the very first book to be read by Alix Earle, a nemesis of Alex Cooper. So it’s safe to say that Sofia has got folks in a tizzy.

It was to be expected. The fallout between Sofia and Alex was and still is so much more than your typical professional separation. It’s a look into the depth and dynamics of female friendship, what happens when two women go into business together and how competitive things can get when you throw power imbalances, competing visions for the future, the desire for sole proprietorship, money, and of course, a man, into the mix. And it’s perhaps the best example of a case where conflict becomes the product.

People have been waiting with bated breath to hear Sofia’s full side of the story. I mean, we’ve heard so much from Alex, from her YouTube video a few years ago addressing the situation to the Hulu documentary, plus the mentions of it on her own podcast over the years. But with there being such a shift in how Alex is perceived publicly, exacerbated by the June Vanity Fair expose that featured accounts from over 40 employees with claims of toxicity in the Unwell workplace, there’s been a lot of curiosity about what, exactly, Sofia might have gone through during and after their time as business partners.

And that’s really the focal point of the book – what was happening behind the scenes and what was being misrepresented, through to where Sofia is now. She made candid revelations about just how badly she feels she got screwed over and how, exactly, she recovered from one of the biggest betrayals one could face.

According to Sofia, the pair was unhappy with their deal at Barstool. They were making $75,000 each annually despite the fact that they were bringing in millions of listeners to the network through their podcast. They also didn’t own the rights to the show, nor could they do brand deals or speaking engagements, which is a huge source of revenue for podcasters and social media personalities.

Right around the pandemic, the pair engaged in contract renegotiations with Dave Portnoy. But when both left New York during COVID, communication turned ugly as the friends fought over the future of the show. Sofia advocated for better compensation, the ability to get brand deals, speaking engagements and more ownership of the brand. And she was okay with leaving Barstool. Alex, on the other hand, didn’t want to leave Barstool. Sofia says Alex stopped communicating with her and let Dave know she was content to carry the show forward on her own, without Sofia.

Sofia says it was made to look like she walked away from the show, fumbling her own bag, which really wasn’t the case. But it didn’t help that Alex, with her massive platform, could perpetuate this message to millions, since she was now the sole showrunner.

“I was too small. I didn’t have that,” she told the New York Times. “Alex did a really good job of making it sound like I walked away, but I actually didn’t walk away from the show.”

In 2021, she learned Alex took ownership of their podcast over from Barstool and landed a multi-million dollar deal with Spotify. The deal included past episodes and almost 100 of them included Sofia. To add insult to injury, the name Unwell, which Alex branded her network and merch, came from Sofia. The name stemmed from an email she sent during her time working at Morgan Stanley. The name belonging to Sofia is a claim not even Dave denies, despite his disdain for her.

There’s a lot at play here. First, the commodification of female comraderie. This is a phenomenon we’ve seen throughout history, from Thelma and Louise to Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie to Hannah Berner and Paige Desorbo. People love a good female duo. But when the foundation of that female duo is thrust into a male-dominated environment, the cracks can start to show.

It’s clear that Alex had dollar signs in her eyes. So did Sofia, to an extent. But Sofia seemed a lot less willing to cross her friend to land the deal she wanted. And yet, despite all this, she says writing the book actually made her miss Alex.

That revelation highlights just how nuanced and convoluted this situation really is. The two built something from the ground up, grabbing the attention of millions of listeners, mostly women, who appreciated the pair’s candor in their conversations about sex and relationships. To build something like that and have the person who you worked alongside have a hand in taking it away from you has got to hurt. It begs the question of how two women, friends, could build something together only to turn into each other’s greatest competition in an environment where it was made to appear that there was only room for one of them to succeed. And if you ask me, the answer to how that happened is Dave Portnoy.

Dave has never minced words about his dislike for Sofia. But in his most recent appearance on The Toast, his vitriol seems to be at an all-time high. When he was asked about when his dislike for Sofia began, he had this to say:

“When she connected a girl who accused me of sexual assault to Business Insider, which was a total lie and made up.”

If you recall, Business Insider published a story in 2021, citing multiple women who had accused him of being violent during sex, sometimes filming the acts. Dave insinuated that the reason the two stories were written was because Sofia had egged it on, encouraging women to reach out to her if they had anything on Dave. But according to Sofia, women started reaching out to her when it became clear the pair were at odds. A second story followed the year after. He sued the publication for defamation, but it got dismissed. This, Dave says, is a huge part of the reason he ‘hates’ her. And it doesn’t help that she suggested he and Alex had a sexual relationship in the book, which is a claim he also denied during his podcast appearance on The Toast.

The reason I think he had such a huge part in this is because at the time this was all unfolding, he was already such an established media mogul – and he took advantage of the fact that he was dealing with two fairly inexperienced creators. That explains the measly $75,000 annual salary and shitty contract conditions.

In 2020, it was estimated that only one in three top podcasts were hosted by women, which could explain why the podcast was growing so quickly. Female listeners didn’t have a ton of options. But it could also explain why it felt like there was only room for one of them. Dave was aware of the perceived lack of space and used this to his advantage. In his book, Cancel Me If You Can, he admitted to being the one responsible for leaking the story of their falling out. He says he knew it would drive even more listeners over to the podcast and add to each woman’s belief that they were being crossed by the other. And that’s called triangulation.

One of the main takeaways from this situation is that the person who had the biggest influence in all of this was the man who controlled the platform. Not the women ‘fighting’ over it. And this is a dynamic we see all the time in spats between women where a man is at the centre, yet most of the chatter emerges to be about the women. We’re labelled as being in some sort of ‘cat fight’, when this was, in fact, a serious issue about friendship, loyalty, business, ethics and of equal or more importance, their livelihood.

Despite the pettiness at play, like Sofia revealing that Alex staged pap photos of her and her ex, Noah Syndergaard to trap him into being with her, the opening of the book being about Alex Cooper’s husband Matt’s threats of a lawsuit, and Alix Earle quietly offering her support to Sofia, there is a heaviness to this debacle that pushes it a step further than it being the average gossip story. And I think it’s that there was a real loss of friendship here, at least for Sofia, considering Alex has characterized their relationship so much more flippantly than Sofia has.

 “I spent so much of my time after the breakup seeking revenge, seeking justification on the biggest scale — how do I match or surpass her,” she told The New York Times. “When I realized, she’s surpassed me on every level and scale, and that’s a fact, whatever your definition of success is, it was such a relief, to come to terms with that and be ok with it, instead of fighting it.”

She went on to say that she wants to put her Call Her Daddy persona behind her. But she couldn’t do that without putting this all to rest, first, which is why she wrote the book.

“It felt like I couldn't move forward without addressing this big thing,” she said. “She tried to erase me, and I kind of tried to do it back. And then I came to terms with the fact that we will always be linked.”

Six years later, the pair are definitely still linked. But it’s interesting that the public debate is still about who betrayed who, whether Alex is a terrible friend or genius businesswoman, whose version of events seems more truthful and who won. But Dave, the man who, despite his opposition to the claims, has been accused of violent sexual encounters by multiple women and admits to capitalizing off of this conflict, brokered deals and helped shape the public narrative about this feud all while maintaining his place, a profitable place, at that, at the centre of the story. And so perhaps the question should no longer be about who won, but how it became a win or lose situation in the first place.