Asking Gwyneth Paltrow to play ‘F**k, Marry, Kill’ with three of her A-list exes: could you ever?
But this is familiar territory for Alex Cooper whose award-winning podcast, Call Her Daddy specialises in rinsing celebrities of juiciest details and deepest secrets. The latest episode sees the Goop-founder gamely revealing she’d marry ex-husband and the father of her two children Chris Martin, kill Ben Affleck and get Brad Pitt back into bed. Yes, seriously.
Cooper also asked who - out of Pitt and Affleck was a better lover, which Paltrow said was a “really hard” question.
“Brad was like the sort of major chemistry, love of your life kind of, at the time,” she said. “And then Ben was, like, technically excellent.”
Needless to say, Paltrow’s revelations have gone viral - Twitter is gorging on the gossip. However, some commentators have called it “classless” and others have suggested that there would be uproar if roles were reversed and any of the men involved publicly compared female partners in such a way.
And while a lot of A-listers got a lot of airtime in the episode, which was released last night, the real star is surely Cooper, 28, who has 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 $20million.
Call Her Daddy, which 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 but has since expanded to cover many other strands of female empowerment. According to the Wall Street Journal who interviewed Cooper in 2021, “the name Call Her Daddy is a play on calling a male sex partner “daddy” and equalizing 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 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, but she also researches and edits her podcasts by herself, too. Here we take a look at some of her biggest scoops to date...
Miley Cyrus’s virginity loss(es)
The Flowers hitmaker, who admitted that her first sexual experience was aged 11 or 12 with two girls and 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 had not wanted “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 nighttime and were not in the market for threesomes, although she did concede 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 which plagued her as a younger woman.
“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 has 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 with notable nuggets including that her best bedroom skill is 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 recalled. “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!
