Feuds, screaming and walkouts: The inside story of Gen Z queen’s volatile empire

A simmering feud with mega-influencer Alix Earle isn’t the only source of drama surrounding Alex Cooper’s growing podcast empire.

Lately, Cooper — the host of Call Her Daddy, the fourth-most popular podcast in the United States — has been grappling with multiple challenges inside her business, including employee turnover, a sputtering slate of shows, and discord between staff members and her husband and co-chief executive officer, Matt Kaplan, according to people familiar with the company’s operations.

Such issues are becoming more common across the creator economy as myriad hit performers from Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, to Ashley Flowers of Crime Junkie, and the trick-shot artists at Dude Perfect have begun to build diversified companies capitalising on their internet fame, while also running demanding podcasts or YouTube channels.

In 2023, Cooper and Kaplan — a producer of more than 50 films and TV shows, including Netflix’s To All the Boys franchise — co-founded Trending, an umbrella company housing the power couple’s growing business ventures. Initially, the portfolio included Unwell Network, Cooper’s burgeoning collection of lifestyle podcasts, and ACE Entertainment, Kaplan’s production company. The idea was to take Cooper’s audience of Gen Z women and speak directly to them, building content around their interests.

Cooper and Kaplan began hiring dozens of employees to staff their business as they expanded into live events, TV series, a creative agency and physical products. Many of the new recruits were young adults who knew Cooper’s show and were eager to be part of her company’s festive aura while working alongside a woman they admired.

In interviews with news outlets and on podcasts, Cooper described herself and Kaplan as driven entrepreneurs who expected employees to “work hard, play hard”. At one point, she told Marie Claire that as CEO, her door was “always open” to employees and that she and Kaplan fostered a “very positive and safe” environment for their young staff.

Cooper is often extremely busy keeping her show and other creative projects running, say sources who asked not to be identified discussing non-public information, leaving Kaplan to run most of the network’s day-to-day operations. Along the way, he had earned a reputation for frequently yelling at staff members, the people said. The issues have grown so acute that crew members have threatened to walk off the job at film sets and live tours if he doesn’t keep his distance.

The company declined to comment for this story.

Last month, Trending launched a program on YouTube called Unwell Winter Games in which influencers squared off against each other in events, ranging from tubing down a mountain to competing in the drinking game, flip cup. According to TMZ, there were some logistical problems during the run-up to the series, resulting in an influencer-contestant dropping out unexpectedly and being replaced at the last minute by a surprised member of the show’s production team.

At another point during the filming, according to the people familiar with the events, Kaplan berated the staff on set and threatened to prevent them from ever working in Hollywood again if they messed up, resulting in a prominent, long-experienced crew member breaking down in tears. Crew members had filed complaints through the formal, on-set process and eventually told leadership they would quit if Kaplan didn’t behave better, said the sources.

Some of the internal tension has spilled out publicly. In Call Her Alex, a 2025 Hulu documentary about Cooper’s first live tour, the production manager threatens to quit at one point. In a subsequent scene, Kaplan chalks up the situation to the demanding work schedule surrounding the tour. But according to a person close to the conflict, the manager’s concerns had much more to do with Kaplan disrespecting staff by yelling and swearing at them. The documentary also captured a frenzied environment as the company rushed to put together a live show.

In the past year, several high-level executives have left Unwell, including the company’s head of brand marketing, head of the network — its second in three years — and chief growth officer. Cooper has said Unwell employs about 100 people. On LinkedIn, at least 20 have marked themselves as leaving in 2025 and 2026.

Meanwhile, Unwell has struggled to increase hit programming beyond Call Her Daddy. In 2025, as part of a broader deal with SiriusXM Holdings, the company launched three original programs designed for an Unwell-branded satellite radio station. Less than a year later, all three were cancelled.

In 2025, Cooper’s company also parted ways with Earle, the host of Hot Mess, the network’s buzziest creative expansion. At the time, Unwell offered little explanation for Earle’s departure. But recently, Cooper drew attention to the rift publicly. On TikTok, she said she was “tired of waking up” and seeing Earle spreading “fake drama” — referring, it seemed, to Earle’s recent repost of a video criticising Cooper’s podcast interviews. Afterward, Earle responded, “Okay on it!!”

The surprise salvo rattled the internet, drawing intense scrutiny by everyone from amateur online sleuths to the New York Times. Earle, through her publicity team, declined to comment.

These days, rather than building new programs from scratch, Unwell was focusing on acquiring existing shows, Cooper said in a recent interview with a podcast on her network. The shift means Cooper’s team has entered a highly competitive market against well-established players who have larger budgets and fewer ties to any one individual star.

For now, Call Her Daddy continues to be Unwell’s biggest program. Podscribe, a podcast data company, estimates most shows on the network receive under 100,000 downloads a month. Call Her Daddy receives an estimated 13.3 million.

Trending continues to release projects at a rapid clip. In the past month, it has launched several films and TV shows, including Love Overboard for Hulu, a dating competition series, the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special for Disney and a new season of XO, Kitty, a spin-off of Kaplan’s original Netflix success. The series was No.1 on the streamer when it premiered in April.

Cooper’s live tours have also been gaining traction with fans. Last year, she held a two-day festival in Las Vegas, complete with Chippendales dancers and a pool party with Paris Hilton spinning tunes as DJ. Three of her West Coast shows in 2024 grossed a total of $US540,000 ($755,000) with 9549 tickets sold, according to Pollstar. The company’s ad agency has also picked up prominent clients, including Google, and Cooper has said sales in the department are nearly on par with revenue from podcasting.

Last week, Unwell announced it had hired new executive leadership, including Joanne Bradford, previously of Honey, an online shopping company, who will serve as president. Ellen Rocamora, who previously worked for more than a decade at The Ellen DeGeneres Show, has joined as an executive producer. The new team members will be tasked, in part, with helping Cooper as she continues to navigate new lines of business.

It’s a tricky career trajectory, but one that can make sense for financial reasons in the long term. “Creator work is not necessarily stable,” said Jess Rauchberg, an assistant professor of communication technologies at Seton Hall University.

“They are leveraging their visibility into something that can be consumed off the podcast.”

Whether an influencer could branch out successfully, she added, often depended on the level of the team around them. “It’s partially skill, but also privilege,” she said.

Cooper, for her part, shows no sign of retreat, despite the difficulties. “Unwell is a really, really fabulous and incredible and, I think, inspiring place to work,” Cooper said in a recent interview on The Burnouts with Phoebe & Sophia podcast. “But it is f—ing hard.”