Alex Cooper, the star of the hit podcast Call Her Daddy, is a golf widow on weekends, but she’s making it work as she expands her empire into television.
“I’m obsessed with reality TV. My poor husband. Well, actually not my poor husband, Matt, you’re fine. He golfs every Sunday, and I have 19 hours to binge [TV]. Obviously, there’s nothing better than sitting down and binging The Bachelor or whatever show you’re about to watch. I have been obsessed with reality TV all the way back to Laguna Beach, like, bitch, I’ve been there in that shit, and I loved it, and I am now excited to be able to produce something myself,” she said.
Cooper was speaking with Rob Mills, EVP, Unscripted and Alternative Entertainment, Walt Disney Television, at Hulu’s Get Real event, which brought together all of its reality talent.
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This comes a month after Deadline revealed that the streamer had greenlit her first dive into reality television. Overboard for Love, which she is exec producing through her Unwell Productions banner, is a dating show set on a boat. With a twist, obviously.
“I’m never going to stray away from the main thing, which is Call Her Daddy. I feel like I have such a handle on how I run my business, but the reality is, I went to film and television school. I’ve always wanted to produce or direct, so that’s always been something that’s been a calling to me, and I think unscripted also has been something I’ve been passionate about. So, it made sense to get into that category. On top of that, I know my audience loves it, I know that the daddy gang is binging every show. I want to challenge myself, and I want to venture into new departments. With my company, we all had a big sit down moment of what scripted and unscripted are we going to look to go after this year and unscripted was the leading runner. We’ve got to give it to the daddy gang, and it’s got to be a dating show,” she added.
Mills noted that sometimes big stars pitch networks as exec producers but are only ever involved in a small way, helping to promote a show by sticking their name on it. Not so, for Cooper, he adds.
“I’m like, tell us whenever we’re being too much. We’re looking at fabrics [for the show], we are getting so specific with the wall colors and every detail. Unwell, the company I’ve built with my husband is a very, very specific brand, you feel it, you can see it, you can almost taste it. With Overboard for Love, obviously I’m not going to stray so far away from the genuine nature of reality shows that we love, but there’s going to be a lot of twists that I think are going to elevate this show. Also, hot people on a yacht in the summer? Are you fucking kidding me? I will be going to the boat this summer. I will be going and seeing everyone filming. I have been so involved, I was watching casting videos and these people are so f*cking entertaining, I can’t dwindle it down. I’m involved in all of the production, I’m involved in the design, I’m involved in the twists and the turns and all of it. It’s been a really fun time, and I’m just getting started,” she added.
For the uninitiated, Cooper and Sofia Franklyn started Call Her Daddy in 2018 with Barstool Sports. In June 2021, Cooper went solo and signed a massive deal with Spotify, thought to be worth around $60M. She moved the podcast away from being as sex-orientated as it was in the beginning and started interviewing the likes of Vice President Kamala Harris, Monica Lewinsky, Amanda Knox and Jane Fonda as well as the younger stars you’d expect her to.
“In the beginning… I was saying some of the craziest shit people have ever heard. My dad still to this day, is like, avoid episode three, because it was about blow jobs. It was conversations that a lot of people were having behind the scenes and I think that’s what reality shows do. They bring to light things that are happening in your homes, or they’re happening in real dating, but you don’t [regularly] get to see it on screen and I think Hulu is doing a great job bringing that to light.”
Last year, Cooper signed an even bigger deal with SiriusXM, which is thought to be worth double her previous arrangement.
She’s also landed her first scripted series; she will exec produce Dead Letters, a mystery drama starring Pretty Little Liars’ Lucy Hale, who is dating Harry Jowsey, who has his own podcast Boyfriend Material at Cooper’s Unwell, that is in the works at Netflix.
“From day one as a creator, something that I’ve always had to push up against is I am very outspoken, and I want my content to be the way that I want it to be. I totally know sometimes it’s not for everyone,” she said.
We’ll find out how many people it’s for over the next twelve months.
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