'Call Her Daddy' fans react to Alex Cooper's podcast announcement: 'I'm unwell'

Alex Cooper (@fathercooper), the host of the popular Call Her Daddy podcast, is piggybacking off her success as a podcaster to launch her own podcast network, The Unwell Network.

The Unwell Network is a subsidiary of the Gen Z media company Trending, which she runs with her fiancé, Matt Kaplan, a film producer, the CEO of ACE Entertainment and XO Kitty producer.

In an interview with Deadline, Cooper shared that her vision is to make The Unwell Network a place to bring different content creators together in a new way for a younger generation.

“I have an uncommon and amazing relationship with my audience. We have this connection and bond built upon trust that’s allowed us to cover all sorts of topics in a way that isn’t exclusive or intrusive,” Cooper told Deadline. “We live in a world where we are inundated with content, but The Unwell Network will be the source everyone can go to for unique perspectives exploring what’s top of mind today for this generation.”

Its first partners are Alix Earle (@alixearle) and Madeline Argy (@madelineargy), two of the biggest names in influencing right now.

Earle is a Miami-based influencer with over 5.6 million TikTok followers, while U.K.-based Argy isn’t far behind, with 4.6 million TikTok followers.

Fans have been begging Cooper to bring Earle on the show for a while, and now it looks like fans have finally got their wish.

Earle teased that she had a “big announcement” on her TikTok, adding that she was both “petrified” and “really excited” about her future plans, which fans speculated would include announcing her new role on The Unwell Network.

“Big Al has a surprise!” Earle said in the TikTok.

“Why do I feel like it has something to do with Alex Cooper’s Unwell company dropping tomorrow,” queried @lindseyfichtner5.

“ALIX WITH ALEX????” added @avees45.

Earle then formally announced her partnership, using the catchphrase, “I am UNWELL.”

The history of ‘Call Her Daddy’ and Alex Cooper

Cooper got her start by launching the Call Her Daddy podcast from her living room along with then-roommate and co-host Sofia Franklyn (@sofiafranklyn). In 2021, Time called Cooper “arguably the most successful woman in podcasting.”

The podcast centered around sex and relationships, and Time described Cooper as exuding a “big sister energy” that many were drawn to.

The podcast also made a habit of using the “I am unwell” phrase, which quickly became their signature and seems to be the inspiration for the new Unwell Network.

The podcast even sold merchandise with the phrase.

While Cooper has gone on to utilize the phrasing in her new network, some longtime fans argue that it was actually her co-host Franklyn who first used the phrase, not Cooper.

For instance, a 2020 Reddit thread paints a story of how Franklyn started the phrase and accused Cooper of continuing to “profit off her back.”

“When Alex had Laren on the podcast they tried to say that unwell was ‘their thing’ and that they said it all the time before they even knew Sofia, but the merch was always based on Sofia’s story and that was them trying to run with it so they could keep making the merch,” wrote Redditor fracengrankie on the thread.

Another Reddit thread also credited Franklyn as the originator of the phrase when in episode 25 of the Call Her Daddy podcast, she talked about how she had called into work and said, “I am unwell” when she was attending Coachella.

Franklyn left the Call Her Daddy podcast in 2020. Cooper publicly accused her former friend and co-host of asking for more money despite not doing the work and alleged Franklyn’s boyfriend was “exploiting the show as well,” The Daily Mail reported at the time.

Franklyn now also hosts her own podcast, Sofia with An F, and she also publicly claimed she made the “I am unwell” phrase popular when she appeared as a guest on another podcast.

Regardless of the controversy surrounding the phrase, fans of the podcast seem to be very excited about the new collaborations in store for the Unwell Network.

“I’m unwell from this news,” wrote @grandma_droniak.

“This is gonna be such good content,” added @got3onthadash.

“My two favorite worlds are colliding and I am seriously UNWELL,” summed up @heatherholcomb28.

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