As the world continues to await influencer Alix Earle's response to podcaster Alex Cooper's public callout, Dakota Johnson might have just given us a glimpse into the underlying tension between them. Last year, during her participation in Vanity Fair's lie detector test, Johnson was presented with photos of both women to see if she could recognize them, despite her claim of not being online.
When shown a photo of Earle, Johnson innocently asked, "Is that a person on a TV show? Oh, is it Call Her Daddy?" Then, when presented with Cooper's photo, she wondered, "Are they not the same person?" The interviewer clarified that Cooper was indeed the host of the Call Her Daddy podcast. Johnson was further shocked to learn that both women shared the same first name, albeit with different spellings.
"They're both named Alex? And they both do podcasts?" she exclaimed in confusion. "Are they friends? Are they enemies? Is there beef?" While the interviewer didn't have answers to most of her questions, she did joke at the time that there "could be" some tension between Cooper and Earle.
"Oh, shit. About their podcasts? Do they talk about the same things? What's going on?" Johnson replied. "Should I be friends with them? They look like nice people." While we can't be certain if Johnson's intuition manifested the feud between the two women, it's clear she sensed some underlying tension between them.
Although Earle left Cooper's Unwell Network months before Johnson's comment during her Vanity Fair test in June 2025, nothing was ever confirmed about what exactly transpired between the two or why Earle parted ways with Cooper's company in March 2025. Earle had launched her Hot Mess podcast under Unwell but took it with her when she left.
Rumors of a rift between them have swirled over the past year, but the drama truly peaked over the weekend when Cooper took to TikTok to directly accuse Earle of starting "fake drama" and creating a "fake narrative" about their relationship.
"Hey girl, the passive aggressive reposts and likes and commenting on things—I've got to call you out here," Cooper said in the video. "You're going to need to get specific and just say what you've got to say about me. There's no NDA. No one is stopping you. Stop hiding behind other people and just say it yourself."
It seemed Cooper was addressing a TikTok video Earle had reposted days prior, in which another creator called the Call Her Daddy host "so awful" for telling people's stories when they're at their lowest. Earle hasn't dropped her response yet, but she did reply in the comment section of Cooper's TikTok with the words, "Okay on it."
