Few can say they’ve interviewed everyone from Gweneth Paltrow to Kamala Harris, but for Alex Cooper - the host of the award-winning podcast Call Her Daddy - it’s her day job.
The podcast specialises in rinsing celebrities - and as of its latest episode, politicians - of juicy details, and often, their deepest secrets (fortunately not in Harris’ case).
In the latest episode, the US Vice President and Democratic candidate in the upcoming election, Kamala Harris, spoke with Cooper about her upbringing, her political career, and her stance on abortion rights while criticising her opponent President Trump in the process.
Ms Harris also took the interview as an opportunity to respond to comments made by Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who suggested that Harris “doesn’t have anything keeping her humble” because she doesn’t have any biological children.
Saying that she feels sorry for Ms Sanders, Ms Harris, who has two stepchildren from her marriage to Doug Emhoff said: “I feel very strongly, we each have our family by blood and then we have our family by love. And I have both. And I consider it to be a real blessing.”
“I love those kids to death. Family comes in many forms, and I think that increasingly, all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore,” she continued.
In some of her more scandalous interviews, Cooper has asked Gweneth Paltrow to play, “F**k, Marry, Kill’ with three of her A-List exes (she’d marry Chris Martin, kill Ben Affleck and get Brad Pitt back into bed) and quizzed Jamie Lynn Spears about her tumultuous relationship with her older sister Britney.
While a lot of A-listers get airtime in her episodes, the real star is surely Cooper, 28. She has a form for effortlessly coaxing confessions out of the most famous people in the world. Her ability to ask the unaskable is what has made her highest-paid female podcaster on Spotify — and second only to Joe Rogan overall — with an annual salary of $20 million (£16m).
Call Her Daddy, which Cooper launched in 2018 with former co-host Sofia Franklyn (there’s been cash-related beef since, which has seen the duo part ways) started out with a focus on sex with a “female locker-room talk” bent. However, it has since expanded to cover many other strands of female empowerment.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which interviewed Cooper in 2021, “the name Call Her Daddy is a play on calling a male sex partner ‘daddy’ and equalising the power dynamics between women and men”. In 2022, it garnered an average of five million listeners per episode.
Pennsylvania-born Cooper is engaged to Hollywood producer Matt Kaplan and is also known as Father Cooper to her fans and two million Instagram followers. She is clearly a stellar presenter, having majored in film and television at Boston University, where she was also a Divison 1 soccer player. However, she also researches and edits her podcasts by herself.
Here we take a look at some of her biggest scoops to date...
Miley Cyrus’s virginity loss(es)
The Flowers hitmaker admitted that her first sexual experience was aged 11 or 12 with two girls — and that it went past first base.
When Cooper asked when she had sex with a man for the first time, Cyrus said: “Well, I didn’t go all the way with a dude [until] I was 16 — it wasn’t Nick Jonas — but I ended up marrying the guy.”
This confirmed that her first was Liam Hemsworth — but there was even more to the tale. Cyrus told Cooper that she did not want to “seem like a loser” and lied to Hemsworth, telling him she was not a virgin, a lie she maintained for 10 years.
Hailey Bieber’s favourite sex position
“I really like doggy style,” was one of the most memorable quotes from the model’s interview with Cooper.
Not only this, but Bieber also confided that her and husband Justin preferred to have sex at night. She also said they were not in the market for threesomes, although she conceded that the idea was “really fun and sounds exciting”.
Having been frank about her bedroom preferences, Bieber remembered that she was being recorded and that her parents were likely to hear the podcast, commenting “cringe”.
Jane Fonda’s battle with disordered eating
Cooper proved she’s not all about salacious sex scoops when she interviewed Jane Fonda.
The veteran actress and star of Grace and Frankie opened up about the mental health issues that plagued her when she was younger.
“Most of the hardships that I’ve gone through in my life happened earlier in my life,” she said. “I suffered bulimia very, very bad. I led a secret life. I was very, very unhappy. I assumed I wouldn’t live past 30. I’m 85.”
Fonda told Cooper that she had spent much of her life trying to overcome the idea that “I’m not lovable... if I’m not really thin”.
Emily Ratajkowski’s on-set sexual harassment
When Cooper interviewed the model who found fame after starring in Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines music video, she wanted details about the shoot.
Although Ratajkowski’s reps stepped in to object, she ultimately said that the experience with Thicke had been deeply problematic and inappropriate.
“He ended up serving me a lot of alcohol,” she recalled. “I was so drunk that I barely remember some parts.”
The mother of one also said she had not heard from Thicke since.
Christina Aguilera’s mile high masturbation
Making Cooper’s job easy, Aguilera talked openly and at length about her sexuality. Notable nuggets included her best bedroom skill being oral sex.
“I love a blowjob,” she said. But the standout revelation was during a conversation on sex toys — of which Aguilera is a fan.
“The vibrator was a game changer whenever I was first exploring myself,” she said. “I remember having this pocket-size one I could pack in my bag on an airplane. I was horny!” The star then confessed to using it under blankets during flights. Dirrty, indeed!
