Dave Portnoy has debunked the viral theory that Alex Cooper and Alix Earle’s “beef” stemmed from a Carl’s Jr. commercial in which Earle allegedly landed on Cooper last year.
The Barstool Sports founder weighed in on the ongoing feud between the two on Monday’s episode of the “Chicks in the Office” podcast.
“By the way, I was wrong when I said in the video that I heard it was all Carl’s Jr. Have you heard of it?” Portnoy, 49, asked co-hosts Leah Ciuffo and Fran Mariano, referring to the latest “Tea by the Sea” video.
“I think there’s a lot of talk going around about one guy being jealous of the other because he was in an Adam Sandler movie or a Super Bowl commercial,” Chufo responded. “So there was a lot of that in the Carl’s Jr. commercial.”
In addition to appearing in the popular burger chain’s 2025 Super Bowl ad and a July 2025 ad with Paris Hilton, Earl also had a cameo in Sandler’s 2025 Netflix film Happy Gilmore 2.
However, Portnoy went on to tell Ciufo and Mariano that even if Cooper had been offered $10 million, he would not have appeared in the Carl’s Jr. commercial. He also noted that the two shared the same publicist, Kate Bailey.
“If I had a gun to my head and $10 million in my bag, I wouldn’t have done that Carl’s Jr. ad,” the host of the podcast “Call Her Daddy” said, according to Portnoy.
“So it probably wasn’t a Carl’s Jr. ad,” he added of the source of Cooper and Earl’s feud.
After debunking Carl Jr.’s commercial rumors, the Barstool Sports founder speculated that the real cause of the two’s quarrel was “contract issues” with Earl’s podcast, Hot Mess, and Cooper’s Unwell Network.
Earle signed with Unwell in 2023, but she was let go two years later amid reports of tensions and creative differences between her and Cooper.
“I don’t know what the contracts were,” Portnoy said of Earl and Cooper’s Unwell contracts. “I know Alex Cooper, when he met her once, said, ‘I want to apologize for what happened on Call Her Daddy.’ Now that I’m in talent management, I know how difficult that is.”
Cooper’s hit “Call Her Daddy” podcast first launched on Portnoy’s Barstool Sports in 2018.
However, co-founder Sophia Franklin left the show following a dispute over intellectual property rights. Cooper ultimately left Barstool in 2021 to join Spotify.
“And for me, it was like, ‘Okay, I have an Alex Earl problem,'” Portnoy continued. “She seems huge. It’s like there’s all this money coming in, but it’s probably going to go to the network. There’s going to be some tension.”
Representatives for Mr. Cooper and Mr. Earle did not immediately respond to Page Six’s requests for comment.
The rumored feud between the “Call Her Daddy” and “Hot Mess” hosts was reignited earlier this month when Earl, 25, reposted a searing TikTok video comparing Cooper, 31, to an “ambulance chaser” and “the Grim Reaper.”
Cooper addressed rumors of a feud on Monday in his TikTok video, telling Earle to “stop hiding behind everyone else.”
“Speak for yourself,” the Golden Globe-nominated podcast host said. “Because I’m really tired of waking up in the morning and seeing you using this fake drama to distract yourself from other things.”
She added: “I know what happened, and you know too, so please speak up.”
Earl then responded to Cooper’s comment on the video by saying, “That’s fine!”
