Out East and Up Late For Alex Cooper’s Unwell Weekend

Arriving at the Breakers motel in Montauk, it’s not hard to find Alex Cooper. It’s not the platinum blonde hair, the sheer knit dress, or the world-known voice worth, reportedly and as of last week, $125 million. It’s the crowd.

“I think she’s over there,” my boyfriend notes as we walk up the gravel driveway. We watch as a crowd of well-dressed 20-somethings huddle around one the event’s many stations (this one, a Carbone pop-up slinging bowls of spicy vodka pasta overseen by Mario Carbone himself). It starts to move, and when I stand on my tippy-toes, I can see the top of Cooper’s head, smiling, laughing, engaging, as she attempts to move from one end of the party to the other. And where Alex Cooper goes, people will follow.

Starting Aug. 23, Cooper and UNWELL, the talent network founded by the Call Her Daddy podcaster and her husband Matt Kaplan, hosted their fourth major activation of the year, following weekend takeovers at SXSW, the Kentucky Derby, and Fenway Park. For two days only, the Breakers motel in Montauk became Motel 30, as Cooper and company transformed the property into the ultimate end-of-summer event, fully decked out for the occasion with multiple bars, lawn games, and activations that ranged from a Burt's Bees popsicle stand with custom "Father's Bees" balms to a Bondi Sands pool takeover with a custom self-tanning bar

It also happens to be Cooper’s 30th birthday. “I'm just not a birthday girl, which I know is contradictory for being a Leo,” Cooper says. “I am usually someone that never celebrates my birthday.” So instead, she threw a party for everyone else.

The weekend kicked off on Friday night at the Breakers with the official End of Summer Unwell party.

Daddy Gang, Cooper’s devoted fan base, is, of course, out in full force; for both Motel 30 events (on Saturday afternoon, there is a more wellness-focused redux of the Friday event, complete with IVs and cold plunges), entrance is free and on a first-come, first-serve basis, with fans RSVP-ing in advance online. The crowd is largely female, with a few dutiful boyfriends in the mix, placated by the open bar and aforementioned Carbone. Some have traveled as far as Australia and South Africa, and many have come solo. “The amount of people that came up to me that were like, ‘I came alone and now these are my four new best friends. We're all going to meet up in the city,’" she tells me during our Sunday-lunch debrief, a few hours before the weekend officially closes out later that night with tables at Surf Lodge and too many bottles of Casa Del Sol. “It's scary to go to a random event alone, but you know the type of people that are going to be there are accepting, fun girls.”

As Cooper makes her way through the crowd, she’s stopped not just for selfies (though there are plenty of those), but for full-on heart-to-hearts — there’s a reason Call Her Daddy’s tagline is “creating conversation since 2018.” “It’s great to have the fun party vibes, but also I love intimate moments with these girls,” she says. “The amount of people that were like, ‘Before I take the picture, can I tell you a story?’ And I'm like, ‘Oh, we're going to be here all day. And I'm so down for it.’”

It’s not just Daddy Gang that turns out for the weekend, though. Two of Cooper’s latest Unwell talents, Owen Thiele and Hallie Batchelder, are making the rounds, alongside recent Call Her Daddy guests like Maria Georges and Leah Kateb. Noah Centineo, a friend and frequent collaborator of Kaplan’s, shows up for Saturday’s surfing lessons with Red Bull, and I’m told I’ve just missed Bethenny Frankel when I pull up to the Health & Unwellness event later in the day (I’m able to catch up on her appearance on TikTok later; looks like she had fun!). On Saturday night, the Unwell team and other close friends in town come together to throw Cooper an intimate, invite-only dinner, catered by Carbone at a private estate nearby. There, Cooper, for the first time all weekend, gets the birthday-girl treatment, complete with a massive funfetti cake that comes with what seems like three-feet high sparklers. “I can’t blow that out,” she says, eying the pyro. “But I love you all.”

The next day, sipping an Arnold Palmer, she reflects on what it means to turn 30, both personally and as a businesswoman at the top of an empire centered around young women. “Honestly,” she says, “I couldn’t feel better. Everyone keeps saying it’s your best decade, and I wish every woman could feel that because it's like wherever you are at, whether you're single, whether you're in between jobs, whether you have massive success, it doesn't matter. Thirties just means you are so much more clear on what makes you happy, what fulfills you. You're having better sex. Everything is just better.”

“When I got married, people asked me a similar question about how it would change the show,” she continues. “If anything, I think it's just making me be able to reach more people. Because before I got married, I had no idea what being married was like. Now I've done single, now I've done relationships, now I'm in a healthy relationship. I feel like each step has actually just made me be able to be a better creator because I have more of a bandwidth of an understanding of what people are going through. So turning 30, I'm just excited.”

Photos courtesy of UNWELL and Madison McGraw.