She became one of the most hated women in America after what was meant to be a private moment between two consenting adults was beamed around a stadium – and then the world.
Kristin Cabot, the woman at the centre of the Coldplay ‘kiss cam’ moment last July, has finally given a tell-all interview with none other than Oprah Winfrey to reveal her side of the story.
But while she admitted she had made a mistake the night she was caught by cameras cuddling up to her boss, she also took aim at Gwyneth Paltrow and Ryan Reynolds for adding fuel to the media storm that followed.
Watch the video above.
Kristen Cabot has spoken to Oprah Winfrey about the Coldplay kiss-cam debacle. (YouTube/@Oprah)
Cabot was Chief People Officer at tech company Astronomer when she went to a Coldplay concert at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts last July.
By the end of the night, her career and reputation were in tatters after she was caught on Coldplay’s famed kiss cam cuddling up to her boss and the company’s chief executive Andy Byron.
Now Cabot has spoken out during an hour-long interview on The Oprah Podcast.
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The viral moment that ended Cabot’s career. (TikTok/instaagraace)
While introducing Cabot to her listeners, Winfrey said that while many would not recognise her name, everyone would know her face from “the most viewed video of 2025”.
She then showed the moment they were caught on camera, when Coldplay frontman Chris Martin quipped, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy”.
Winfrey said the video had since been viewed more than 300 billion times, was made into countless memes and recreated for laughs.
She said those “15 viral seconds” of footage put Cabot at the eye of a public spectacle within hours that resulted in her being the target of mocking, vitriol and even death threats.
Cabot told Winfrey she had agreed to what would be her only on-camera interview because “what happened to me was not OK”.
She also said she was disappointed that other women had been her most vocal opponents, which led Winfrey to mention the ad Gwyneth Paltrow made for Astronomer.
Ryan Reynolds’ marketing agency, Maximum Effort, created a viral ad campaign featuring Paltrow – who is Chris Martin’s ex-wife – where she jokingly answered questions about the kiss.
Gwyneth Paltrow in the ad she made for Astronomer. (X, Astronomer)
“Yeah, that was really disappointing to me. I felt like Gwyneth, someone whose company is founded on or framed around uplifting women and women’s well-being, and she doesn’t need the money,” Cabot explained.
“I don’t know why she felt she needed to throw gas on the fire and get involved.
“It just felt really hypocritical to me and unnecessary. And I don’t want to let Ryan Reynolds off the hook either.
“He produced the ad, he created it, and his wife [Blake Lively] has just gone through something really similar over the last year, and I find it really kind of astounding that he thought this was a great way to lead.”
Oprah said she called Paltrow and asked about this, and had a statement from her which she agreed she could share.
“She said she was told that you and Andy Byron had signed off on that commercial, and she said she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t heard that you’d signed off on the commercial.
“Had you signed off on the commercial?
“No,” Cabot replied before adding Paltrow had “communicated that to me as well”.
Cabot denies she signed off on the ad. (YouTube/@Oprah)
Cabot revealed that about six weeks before the concert, she and her husband Andrew had decided to separate “and were living apart and planning for a divorce”.
She said she and her boss had “a very close working relationship”, and one day she disclosed to him about her marriage.
Cabot claimed he told her he was in “the exact same situation” and he and his wife were also living apart and planning to divorce.
She said in the four to six weeks after that they became closer and began talking over lunches and “developed feelings for each other in that time”.
Cabot said when her friends said they had two spare tickets to Coldplay she decided to go and offer her boss the other ticket.
By that time, they had confessed they had feelings for each other and made a plan to tell their board of directors, even though they were yet to even ‘touch’ each other.
Cabot said when she arrived at the concert, she got a message from her daughter to let her know her estranged husband was also there.
“I was walking into the concert and my daughter messaged me and said, ‘It’s so great that you and Andrew are both at Coldplay’,” she said.
She recalled wondering whether it would be “weird” if she ran into her husband at the concert.
Coldplay had been playing at the time of the awkward moment. (Getty)
“But then I was like, ‘I’m in Gillette Stadium, there’s 55,000 people here, I’m probably not going to run into him’.”
Once the concert started she said she had a couple of drinks and was feeling relaxed with Byron, whom she said she had “a really big crush on”.
As the concert went on, she said she got swept up in the atmosphere when they began swaying to the Coldplay hit Yellow, when suddenly they were on the Jumbotron.
“That was a moment of total horror,” Cabot said.
“My immediate thought was, ‘Oh my God, my husband’s in the building’.”
Even though he was also there “with someone else”, they were in the midst of a separation and “the last thing I wanted to do was embarrass him”.
“My second thought was ‘I’m in the arms of my boss and I’m the head of HR’,” she said.
Cabot said she did not hear Martin say prior to that that they were going to film the audience, or his quip about them having an affair.
She said she and her boss immediately left the audience and went to sit at a bar to discuss what had happened.
Her friends then came and suggested they go home but they were stopped by a woman on the way out who asked if that was her on the Jumbotron.
The entire way home she said she was worried about her estranged husband, and also her job.
After a tense ride in a car with their friends, her boss came back to her apartment to talk about next steps, and decided they would talk to the board the next day, even drafting an email.
In the middle of the night, she got a message from her husband with a copy of the TikTok video.
But she had no way of knowing how big the story would get.
She said Byron resigned a few days later, and she also left her job because of how “viral and toxic” the story had become.
While she understood people found the video funny, she said it was important to remember there were “real humans behind this”.
Cabot said she had paid an “unimaginable price” for her mistake, and wanted people to be kinder to others moving forward.
“I’m just a regular person. I’m a private person. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be famous,” she said.
“I want people to be kind.”
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