The woman at the centre of the Coldplay “kiss cam” incident has broken her silence.
The exposing moment happened at the band’s show at the Gillette Stadium near Boston in July during the regular segment of the show in which a roving camera finds a couple in the crowd and they kiss as they are shown on the big screens.
In this case, the camera panned onto Andy Byron, CEO of the tech platform Astronomer, who had his arms wrapped around Kristin Cabot, the HR chief of Astronomer.
As soon as the two saw themselves on the screens, Byron quickly let go of Cabot and dived out of the shot, while Cabot held her hands to her head and turned her back. Chris Martin said as they were first shown, “Ohh, look at these two,” before adding as they reacted with shock: “Come on, you’re ok. Oh what? Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”
Coldplay’s Chris Martin after unknowingly exposing Astronomer CEO’s alleged affair with his HR chief:
“I hope we didn’t do something bad…” pic.twitter.com/fDJx8ZYERF
— Buzzing Pop (@BuzzingPop) July 17, 2025
Soon after the incident, the footage went viral and both Byron and Cabot stepped down from Astronomer. It later came out that despite accusations of an affair, Cabot and her husband “were privately and amicably separated several weeks before the Coldplay concert”.
Now, Cabot has spoken about the fallout from the incident in a new interview with The Times.
“I could have been struck by lightning, I could have won the lottery, or this could have happened,” she said of the moment. “It has been like a scarlet letter; people erased everything I’d accomplished in my life and achieved in my career. This can’t be the final word.”
She went on to say she was “on top of the world” before the kisscam caught her with Byron. “We were sitting in the back of the stadium at the opposite end from the stage in the pitch black just feeling totally anonymous in an arena of 50-60,000 people,” she told The Times. “We were just dancing, I’d had a few High Noons (vodka seltzers). Andy was standing behind me and we were dancing and I grabbed him.”
Cabot continued: “I didn’t hear the announcement that the jumbotron was coming, so suddenly I’m just seeing us on screen.
“My immediate reaction was, ‘Holy shit, Andrew’s [her estranged husband] here’. We were in the middle of an incredibly – and amazingly – amicable separation. I was worried I would embarrass him. He’s an amazing guy and does not deserve that.
“Then a beat later my mind turns to, ‘Oh God, Andy’s my effing boss’, this is a bad look. Boston’s not a big town. And while it wasn’t an Astronomer event or anything, there could have been investors or other staff there.”
Coldplay live at Glastonbury 2024. Credit: Andy Ford for NME
Following the incident she said she became “a meme, I was the most maligned HR manager in HR history.”
Cabot continued: “I think as a woman, as women always do, I took the bulk of the abuse. People would say things like I was a ‘gold-digger’ or I ‘slept my way to the top’, which just couldn’t be further from reality. The amount I sacrificed to get where I did in my career, the amount of hands I’ve had to take off my ass over the years, comments I’ve had to swat away from men. I worked so hard to dispel that all my life and here I was being accused of it.”
She went on to say she was “saddened” that no one from Coldplay’s team ever reached out, or released a statement that might have helped turn down the heat on the incident she believes Martin had helped manufacture.
In Coldplay’s first concert following the incident, he joked: “We’d like to say hello to some of you in the crowd and put some of you on the big screen. How we’re going to do that is we’re going to use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen.
“Please, if you haven’t done your makeup, do your makeup now.”
In the weeks and months after the concert, Cabot said she received thousands of emails, texts and even letters to her home, calling her a “homewrecker” and recommending ways she could meet a “violent end”.
She added: “I’m sure a lot of people will say, ‘This is such a dead story, why bring it back up?’ But it’s not over for me, and it’s not over for my kids. The harassment never ended.”
Cabot went on to say: “One of the main reasons I want to have this conversation is not to prolong any 15 minutes of pathetic fame. Every day I hear something about a kid or a young adult who committed suicide because of how horrific they were treated in the comment section. We have to be kinder to each other, not constantly tear one another down.”
Elsewhere, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin recently surprised a couple on their wedding day, serenading them during their first dance.
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