In 2020, Sofia Franklyn’s life as she knew it fell apart completely.
She had experienced a meteoric rise in entertainment — turning the sex and relationship podcast Call Her Daddy, which she launched in 2018 with her best friend and college roommate Alex Cooper, into a hit with millions of listeners. But when it was time to renegotiate their contract with distributor Barstool Sports and its founder Dave Portnoy, a public fallout over contracts left Cooper with the podcast as a sole host and, after she split with Barstool a year later, a $60 million deal with Spotify. Franklyn, on the other hand, left the show, and says she had to move home because of the stress of losing her company and public goodwill.
Since her departure from Call Her Daddy, Franklyn has created her own podcast, Sofia with an F, where she talks pop culture, reality stars, and gives heartfelt-advice about growing up. But she’s remained notoriously selective about discussing that 2020 split. Now Franklyn is ready to talk through the breakup that changed her life on her own terms — and she’s doing it in a book.
Coming Nov. 10, Franklyn’s memoir Daddy Issues will delve not only into her time on Call Her Daddy but the emotional and physical result of her fallout with Cooper, feelings of betrayal, and learning how to reinvent herself. “The decision [to write the book] was one I came to on my own,” she tells Rolling Stone. “Six years ago, I was reeling from an experience I didn’t understand. I needed to grow up and be free of ego as much as humanly possible.”
For Franklyn, losing Call Her Daddy also meant the loss of relationship with Cooper. “Everything that we had been working toward and planning for the last half a year to year was all of a sudden not the plan anymore and [Cooper thought] we needed to just stay with this company and do what [Portnoy] was saying,” Franklyn told Rolling Stone in 2023. “I found out later [Cooper and Portnoy] 1,000 percent had this relationship that I wasn’t aware of and not a part of. I thought [Cooper was my] best friend, sister, and we are not hiding anything. There’s no way in hell I would speak to our boss without you, that would be fucking crazy, and I don’t think that went both ways.” (At the time, Cooper declined to comment, while Portnoy said Franklyn “still can’t get her story straight.”)
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There’s not a lot else we know about Daddy Issues. But the spectre of Call Her Daddy is still something that follows Franklyn’s career, and the host and commentator plans to address that lingering controversy head on. The cover of Daddy Issues shows a photo of Franklyn with the silhouette of a blonde woman fully cut out of the picture. “For the cover, we played with the idea of using a picture of me from childhood to emphasize the way my story is deeper than what the internet knows, but that didn’t feel right,” Franklyn adds. “I needed the cover to tell a story beyond the title Daddy Issues. It’s jarring, and it’s meant to be. Think of a book like The Social Network, but it’s all hot girls.”
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Franklyn tells Rolling Stone she’s always been intrigued by authors like Ottessa Moshfegh and recently finished reading Belle Burden’s memoir Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. But Daddy Issues will be Franklyn’s first time telling the entire story in her own words. She needed to write it — maybe even more than people wanted to read it.
“A book is reflective, vulnerable; it can’t be performative,” Franklyn adds. “The writing practice has been intense — sitting down, laying everything bare — but probably the most enriching thing I’ve ever done.”