Kristin Cabot, the former chief people officer at Astronomer, has revealed new details about the viral Coldplay kiss-cam moment that drew global attention in July 2025.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey on her podcast, Cabot said both she and former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron were separated from their spouses at the time of the concert.
The interview has added fresh context to a story that became one of the internet’s most widely shared workplace scandals.
New context in first on-camera podcast interview
Cabot said her estranged husband was also attending the Coldplay concert at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts on the night the pair appeared on the venue’s kiss cam.
According to the interview, Cabot told Winfrey she learned this while walking into the concert, after receiving a message from her daughter. She said she and her husband had already separated and were planning to divorce.
“In my mind I thought well is this going to be weird if he sees me with Andy? Like that crossed my mind. If I run into him. But then I was like I’m in Gilette Stadium, there’s 55 thousand people here, I’m probably not going to run into him,” she chuckled.
“But it doesn’t matter … that would’ve been better at the end of the day if I’d just run into him, but he knows how closely Andy and I work together. He knows we socially got lunches and got drinks. It was fine.
“He knows the nature of my work and the way (I work). I’ve shared desks with the CEOs I work with. It’s a very close relationship so it didn’t matter.”
Cabot also said Byron had told her he was separated from his wife at the time.
Winfrey noted those details had not been part of the public understanding of the story, and if they had been, the public’s reaction would have been different.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Astronomer ad after the kiss-cam
Following a flurry of memes circulating on social media, Gwyneth Paltrow agreed to star in a short ad released by Astronomer, where she joked about the company’s unexpected moment in the headlines involving their CEO and head of HR.
“That was really disappointing to me. I felt like Gwyneth, someone whose company [Goop] is founded on or framed around uplifting women and women’s well-being – she doesn’t need the money,” Cabot told Oprah.
“I don’t know why she felt she needed to throw gas on the fire and get involved in all of this.”
Ryan Reynolds’ company, Maximum Effort, also worked on the ad.
Cabot added, “I don’t wanna 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,” she said, referring to Lively’s very public legal battle with It Ends With Us co-star, Justin Baldoni.
Why the kiss-cam story travelled
The original footage showed Cabot and Byron embracing before quickly recoiling as they appeared on the stadium screen. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin responded from the stage, joking that the pair were either “having an affair” or “just very shy”.
The clip quickly spread across social media, becoming a global viral moment and prompting intense scrutiny of both executives. Byron later resigned from Astronomer, followed by Cabot in the same month.
The incident became more than an internet clip because it intersected with workplace culture, executive conduct and the speed at which social video can turn private moments into public crises.
For media companies, it also showed how a short piece of concert footage could move from fan content to mainstream news, social commentary and long-tail interview coverage. The Oprah interview now extends the lifecycle of the story, shifting it from viral spectacle to reputation management and personal narrative.
Cabot’s appearance is being positioned as her only on-camera interview about the controversy. It marks the latest chapter in a story that continues to generate coverage well beyond its original viral spike.