Popular podcaster Alex Cooper claims in a new docuseries that she was sexually harassed by her soccer coach at Boston University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCall Her Alex,\u201d which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday and debuts on Hulu on Tuesday, chronicles the media figure\u2019s ascent to stardom, detailing her early childhood in Pennsylvania and her journey to become one of the most influential podcasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the two-part docuseries, which NBC News viewed screeners of, the \u201cCall Her Daddy\u201d host alleges that her former coach Nancy Feldman \u201cfixated\u201d on her, \u201cwanting to know who I was dating … making comments on my body and always wanting to be alone with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cooper played on the team from 2013 to 2015, according to the BU women\u2019s soccer website<\/a>. Feldman, who retired in 2022 after 27 years at the university<\/a>, made comments about her appearance and her legs, Cooper alleges, and put her hand on Cooper\u2019s thigh. She said Feldman also once questioned her about a date, asking whether she had had sex the night before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI felt so deeply uncomfortable,\u201d she says in the docuseries, adding that she was attending BU on a full-tuition scholarship and felt if she \u201cdidn\u2019t follow\u201d Feldman\u2019s rules, she\u2019d be \u201cgone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the docuseries, Cooper\u2019s mom says the family reached out to a lawyer who advised them to sue Feldman, but warned litigation could take years. Cooper said her parents reached out to BU to report the claims of sexual harassment. Her mom said she provided notes to BU that she took from her calls with Cooper over the years in which her daughter described the alleged incidents. The notes were shown in the docuseries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cooper claims she told BU she wanted to play her senior year but she couldn\u2019t play for Feldman. The university, she alleges, said it told her it wouldn’t conduct an investigation and it wouldn\u2019t fire Feldman. It said Cooper could keep her scholarship even if she didn\u2019t play her senior year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithin five minutes, they had entirely dismissed everything I had been through,\u201d Cooper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feldman and a representative for Boston University did not respond to requests for comment made on Monday. A spokesperson for Cooper said she is not commenting further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The docuseries does not include a statement from the university or from Feldman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a Q&A with director Ry Russo-Young after the Tribeca screening, Cooper reflected on her decision to speak out 10 years after the alleged harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the years since she graduated, Cooper, now 30, has built a media empire. Her millions of listeners, nicknamed the \u201cDaddy Gang,\u201d consider her the go-to voice on relationships, dating and life in your 20s and 30s. In addition to her podcast, one of the most listened to on Spotify, she launched the Unwell Network, a subsidiary of the media company Trending, which she founded with her now-husband, Matt Kaplan, and a drink brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said that while filming the documentary project she returned to BU\u2019s campus for the first time and got emotional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt this point in the filming process, I was not sure I wanted to talk about this experience,\u201d she said in the Q&A, according to People<\/a>, which also shared a clip of the conversation<\/a> on Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe minute I stepped back on that field, I felt so small,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI just felt 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\u2019t the \u2018Call Her Daddy\u2019 girl. I wasn\u2019t someone who had money and influence or whatever. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the first time Cooper has opened up about the allegations, though she has alluded to having had a \u201ctraumatic experience\u201d with a coach during her time on the team. In a 2023 interview with Cosmopolitan magazine<\/a>, she described a \u201cspecific thing\u201d without mentioning what had happened, saying \u201cit\u2019s so personal to me and it took such a toll on my mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said reconnecting with people she played soccer with, \u201cwho were around when things were happening,\u201d had been \u201cpretty cathartic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI met up with one of my teammates in Santa Monica who I hadn\u2019t seen since we graduated \u2014 we didn\u2019t even say hi, we just both started crying,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s another woman that went through it with me, and we finally saw each other recently, and it\u2019s just wild to talk about it together. Connecting with these other women with these scars, that\u2019s the first step to me actually being like, \u201cOh my God, I\u2019m feeling better.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n