The woman who was caught on camera at a Coldplay concert cuddling with her boss is speaking out for the first time since the July incident.
Kristin Cabot, the former human resources head of the tech start-up Astronomer, in a sit-down interview with The New York Times published on Thursday, said she and Andy Byron, the Astronomer CEO she was caught with, were both separated from their spouses at the time of the incident.
“I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot told the news outlet. “And it’s not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay. I want my kids to know that you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up. But you don’t have to be threatened to be killed for them.”
Cabot said her estranged husband was also at the concert, so when she and Byron were caught on the jumbotron, she hid because she didn’t want to “humiliate” her spouse, and also, Byron was her boss.
“I was so embarrassed and so horrified,” Cabot said. “I’m the head of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s, like, so cliché and so bad.”
What could have been a moment seen only by the attendees at the Coldplay concert soon went viral after someone caught it on camera and uploaded it to TikTok. Internet sleuths quickly figured out who Byron and Cabot were, and the moment became known as #coldplaygate.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin joked about it later at one of his shows. Byron and Cabot soon resigned from their roles at Astronomer, and as an apparent PR move, the company enlisted actor and Martin’s ex-wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, to be in a cheeky video explaining what Astronomer does and how they are moving forward. Cabot told the Times that she did not enjoy seeing Paltrow take part in the moment when Paltrow had built her company, Goop, which, as Cabot put it, was seemingly meant to “empower, support and uplift women.”
“I am not excusing the men,” Cabot added. “Please don’t hear me say that.”
She told the publication that she invited Byron to be her plus-one to the Coldplay concert with friends. She added that that night was the first and only time she and Byron ever kissed.
After they were caught on the jumbotron, she said she and Byron went back to the bar and began thinking about how they would handle what had just happened.
“And the initial conversation was, ‘We have to tell the board,’” Cabot said.
She said the board told her she had to step down from her role. After that, she revealed that she went into hiding and dealt with death threats and the paparazzi. She claimed she and Byron have since been in contact at a minimum.