Influencer and podcaster Ellie Schnitt is offering new insight into her brief tenure at Barstool Sports — including working alongside former besties Alex Cooper and Sofia Franklyn.
“We were hired, actually, at the same time,” Schnitt, 29, said on the Friday, August 15, episode of the “Taylor Taylor Taylor Show” podcast, hinting that she chose allegiances amid the feud fallout. “Yes, I did. … Sofia is so nice. She’s such a nice girl, honestly, [and] was always nice to me.”
Schnitt started working at Barstool during the heyday of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, when it was cohosted by both Cooper, 30, and Franklyn, 33. The show eventually sparked a major rift between the two hosts after Cooper left Barstool on her own for a million-dollar payout. (Both Cooper and Franklyn now host their own solo podcasts, with “Call Her Daddy” operating under Cooper’s Unwell Network.)
According to Schnitt, Franklyn was always “so kind” whenever they crossed paths in the Barstool office.
“It feels really good when people I have met and had really positive experiences with are doing really well,” Schnitt explained. “Like, I met Hannah Berner in 2018 [and] she’s a grinder and a hard worker. Watching her put in that work and see success out of it, it just feels really good because there are people where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if you deserve what you have.’”
Schnitt, who now hosts her own “Late Night Drive” podcast, was hired to work at Barstool Sports, the media company founded by Dave Portnoy, shortly after she graduated from college.
“I’d never been a person who thought very much about my career,” Schnitt said on Friday. “I never did [have a life plan]. Part of it, of course, was knowing that at some point I was going to have to take six months off because I [would need] a kidney transplant.”
She added, “I took it, and then [there] was a moment where I was like, ‘OK, I could do this. I’m good at this.’ I didn’t really stop to consider, and, of course, you don’t when you’re 22, [whether] I like this. Is this what will longterm make me happy or is this just what I’m doing at 22? In that moment, you’re, like, ‘Of course this is going to make me happy forever,’ but then you learn a lot of valuable skills, and I learned a lot about the industry and I learned about myself.”
According to Schnitt, working at Barstool was, generally, a “good first job to have.”
“It’s, like, you’re thrown into a fire and you have to figure stuff out,” she said.
Schnitt ultimately left the media company in September 2020.
“I am proud of the work I did and grateful to the coworkers who helped me grow over the last two years, but now I’m really for a new challenge,” she wrote in a social media statement. “Thank you so much to everyone who listened to ‘Schnitt Talk’ and specifically thank you to Alanna for all the work you did to make the show a fun success.”
