Podcast giant Alex Cooper, a top soccer player in high school who went to Boston University on a full scholarship, described what she claimed was three years of escalating sexual harassment by her coach there, Nancy Feldman, that she said ended with her leaving the team senior year.
The allegations were met with audible gasps in the audience at the end part 1 of a new Hulu documentary series Call Her Alex, which just premiered at the Tribeca Festival. In a Q&A after, Cooper said it took her ten years to come forward, which she did in large part because of the documentary, a behind the scenes look at the first live show of her hit podcast Call Her Daddy. The first leg was in Boston. Director Ry Russo-Young asked her to walk out on the BU soccer field and reflect on what it meant to her.
“And the minute I stepped back on the field, I felt so small. I felt just like I was 18 years old again. And I was in a situation with someone in a position of power who abused their power. And I felt like I wasn’t the Call Her Daddy girl. I wasn’t someone who had money and influence or whatever it be. I was just another woman who experienced harassment on a level that changed my life forever and took away the thing I loved the most,” she said during a Q&A after.
She chose to go public to help herself heal and because she claims it is still an issue at the college.
Feldman retired in 2022. University officials who Cooper claims brushed off her allegations are still there, she said. In the doc, she alleges the officials asked her, “What do you want?” but that said they were not going to fire Feldman, did not investigate, but said she could keep her full soccer scholarship.
Deadline has reached out to Boston University for comment.
“During the filming of this documentary, I found out that the harassment and abuse of power is still happening on the campus of Boston University, and I spoke to one of the victims, and hearing her story was horrific, and I knew in that moment, if I don’t speak about this. It’s going to continue happening,” Cooper claimed.
“I’m thinking about the amount of women who’ve probably experienced this, not just on that campus, but on a larger scale in the workplace. This isn’t just happening on college campuses for soccer. This is everywhere. This is systemic. And so I knew it was time to speak about it, and I was terrified, and I’m still terrified. I’m shaking. I feel like I’m a decent public speaker at this point, but I’m scared,” she said.
It also pained Cooper that her that her alleged harasser was a woman, she said.
In the documentary, she claims a pattern that started sophomore year in earnest as the coach focused increasingly on her personally, not on her playing, with questions and comments about her body and her romantic life. She alleged Feldman would try to get her alone, put a hand on her thigh, stare at her, and once asked if she had had sex the previous night.
“It was this psychotic game of ‘You want to play, tell me about your sex life’,” Cooper said in the doc. When she tried to resist, she claimed, Feldman threatened “consequences.” She accused the coach of retaliating on the field by benching her often, including for most of a key championship game, to the confusion of her teammates.
Hulu release a trailer last week. It launches June 10.
Cooper has alluded to a college trauma in the past.
She initially launched the advice and comedy podcast Call Her Daddy in 2018, alongside her then co-host Sofia Franklyn, with Barstool Sports before signing a deal, thought to be worth around $60 million, with Spotify in 2021. The show exploded with women and became second only to The Joe Rogan Experience on the podcast charts before she moved to SiriusXM last year in a deal valued around $120 million.
“I think a lot of this process almost made me realize, if I have the finances to pay for a lawyer and I have the resources to do all these things, how is another woman going to feel comfortable to come forward? I’m still f–king scared up here, you know. And I was nobody when I was in college. I did come forward. I was denied, essentially. And so the story is frustrating, because I want to tell women come forward … But I did, and I wasn’t believed, and then it took me a decade, Cooper said tonight.
“I actually think this is just the beginning. It’s really opened my eyes to how difficult the system is, and it’s so built against us as women, and we have to fight so fucking hard to have our voices heard, and we are denied, or we’re questioned, or you feel shame, and that started to really get in my head of, how am I about to not put this in the documentary? … I realized, holy shit, I have so much more work to do, and I’m going to use my platform to hopefully inspire other people to come forward and tell their stories, because conversation is the only way that we’re going to actually have change and we’re going to make change.”
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