Kristin Cabot has finally broken her silence on the viral ‘kiss cam’ moment with her boss that turned her life upside down.
The 53-year-old, who was the former head of human resources at tech company Astronomer, labelled it a “bad decision” to cozy up to now-former CEO Andy Byron on the jumbotron at a gig.
Recalling the moment frontman Chris Martin joked the couple might be having an affair at the July concert, she told The Times that “Everything just flashed before my eyes”.
The infamous clip racked up over 100 million views within days after the couple tried to hide from view after being caught canoodling in front of everyone.
”I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot added in a separate interview with The New York Post.
“And it’s not nothing. I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay.
“I could have been struck by lightning, I could have won the lottery, or this could have happened. But I’m not some celebrity, I’m just a mom from New Hampshire.”
Byron resigned days later, with their former company penning in a statement on X: “Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met”.
Cabot resigned shortly after.
In the interview, Cabot said that while everyone assumed she and Byron were still married to their partners at the time, they were both amicably separated.
she was head-hunted to lead human resources at Astronomer, and praised her boss Byron for ensuring women at the company had a seat at the table, unlike other businesses she had worked at.
Cabot claims she and Byron had told each other they had separated from their partners about a month before the gig, and her feelings turned into a “big happy crush”.
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The Coldplay concert was the first and only time they kissed, she claimed, and they had no idea that thousands would be there to see them getting close.
“I was so embarrassed and so horrified,” she said.
“I’m the head of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s, like, so cliché and so bad. We both just sat there with our heads in our hands, like, ‘What just happened?'”
Her first reaction was one of horror, realising that her estranged husband Andrew was in the crowd too.
Cabot and Byron departed the stadium quickly and agreed to alert Astronomer’s board.
But by morning, the clip was everywhere.
At 4am, she sent her estranged husband the clip to warn him that it was out there – but she had no idea it would still be viral in the days that followed.
“I became a meme, I was the most maligned HR manager in HR history,” she said.
Her daughter burst into tears when she told her the news, while her son had hoped it would go away within a matter of days. But things went from bad to worse.
Astronomer launched an internal investigation, and she and Byron resigned within days.
The company found no evidence of an affair, but leadership standards had not been met.
The company then hired actress Gwyneth Paltrow – Chris Martin’s ex-husband – for a PR stunt where she jokingly answered questions about the kiss.
Cabot took the joke as a personal insult, and threw away any item she had of Paltrow’s Goop brand in response.
“I was such a fan of her company, which seemed to be about uplifting women, and then she did this… What a hypocrite,” she said.
After Cabot resigned, she now says she’s “unemployable” and has struggled to find work.
Despite briefly staying in contact to discuss “crisis-management advice,” Cabot said she hasn’t spoken to her former boss in months.
She officially filed from divorce from her own husband a month after the kiss cam footage went viral.
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