Overview of Call Her Daddy with Cara Delevingne
In this wide-ranging conversation, Cara Delevingne opens up to Alex Cooper about the childhood trauma, family dynamics, addiction, sexuality, and self-worth issues that shaped her life and career. She also discusses the creative rebirth behind her upcoming music, including how sobriety helped her reclaim her voice, and shares the emotional transition from modeling and acting into making deeply personal music.
Key Themes and Takeaways
Childhood, family, and emotional repression
- Cara describes growing up in London in a privileged but emotionally complicated household.
- She talks candidly about:
- her mother’s mental health and substance use struggles
- feeling unable to express her own pain as a child
- a home life that looked glamorous from the outside but felt confusing and unstable inside
- A recurring theme is that she learned to suppress her emotions to care for others, especially her mother.
Anger, trauma, and self-harm
- Cara explains that when she was young, her unprocessed pain often came out as:
- danger-seeking behavior
- physical risk-taking and injuries
- disordered coping mechanisms
- She reflects on how she tried to match emotional pain with physical pain so she could feel “seen” or validated.
Modeling, fame, and identity
- Cara discusses how modeling gave her fame, money, and access, but also intensified existing issues.
- She says the industry:
- rewarded image over authenticity
- made her feel like she had to perform femininity she didn’t naturally feel
- often felt mean, shallow, and damaging to young women
- She credits her early success with breaking barriers for more individual, expressive models who came after her.
Sexuality and coming out
- Cara shares that she knew she was queer from a young age, but didn’t have the language or safety to fully confront it.
- She discusses:
- dating men while performing a version of herself she thought was expected
- discovering more safety and authenticity in relationships with women
- how her public status gave her more freedom to live truthfully than many other young queer people
- She also recalls being told by powerful people in the industry that being gay would hurt her career.
Addiction and sobriety
- One of the most important parts of the interview is Cara’s discussion of addiction and recovery.
- She explains that she initially used drugs to:
- numb emotional pain
- quiet her mind
- feel connection and relief
- She says addiction escalated into secrecy, isolation, and dangerous behavior, and that her lowest point nearly became fatal.
- She emphasizes that sobriety for her is not about perfection or rigid rules, but about:
- choosing clarity
- avoiding shame spirals
- making peace with herself
- accepting that recovery is not linear
Music as healing and self-expression
- Cara says music has always been a dream, but she could only truly pursue it once she got sober and more self-aware.
- Her upcoming album is described as deeply personal, with songs like:
- “I Forgot”
- “Out of My Head”
- She says the project reflects:
- anger
- humor
- sensuality
- vulnerability
- self-love
- Music became a way for her to transform pain into art rather than hide from it.
Notable Moments and Insights
- Cara says she felt like an “empty vessel” for years, mirroring other people instead of knowing herself.
- She describes the power of naming her addiction and sobriety publicly as a way to remove shame.
- She emphasizes that her relationship with her girlfriend helped her feel safe enough to pursue music seriously.
- She reflects on how much pressure she puts on herself and how much of her life has been about trying to “get her shit together.”
What This Episode Is Really About
At its core, this interview is about:
- healing from childhood trauma
- learning to feel instead of numb
- finding identity beyond public labels
- turning survival into art
- accepting that self-love is an ongoing practice, not a fixed destination
Main Message
Cara’s story is a reminder that success does not erase pain, and that authenticity often arrives only after years of hiding. Her path through addiction, identity, and recovery ultimately leads to a more grounded creative life—one where she is finally making music from a place of truth.