Looking back on 2025’s most viral moments, one I’m sure is ranking high on many people’s list of highlights is the Coldplay kiss cam scandal in July, when a couple with their arms wrapped around each other were shown on the Jumbotron, prompting them to try and hide from the camera. We would soon learn that these people were Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and executive Kristin Cabot, both of whom were married to other people, leading to accusations of an extramarital affair. Now Cabot has shared her side of the story, and that includes criticizing how Gwyneth Paltrow got into the mix.
Not long after the Coldplay kiss cam video started blowing up on social media, Astronomer hired Paltrow, the ex-wife of Coldplay vocalist Chris Martin, to do an advertisement for the AI company. This angered Cabot and she decided to throw away all her products from Goop, Paltrow’s wellness brand. As she explained to The Times:
I was such a fan of her company, which seemed to be about uplifting women. And then she did this. I thought, ‘How dare she after the beating she got for all the conscious uncoupling stuff.’ What a hypocrite.
Kristin Cabot is referring to how Gwyneth Paltrow referred to her separation from Chris Martin in 2014 after ten years of marriage as “conscious uncoupling.” While the term already existed at that point, the Shakespeare in Love actress unquestionably popularized it, though there was no shortage of people who poked fun at her for using that description. So from Cabot’s perspective, it was hypocritical for Paltrow to participate in an ad that was capitalizing on the social media attention that Cabot and Andy Byron were experiencing, when she had experienced similar mockery over a decade beforehand.
Cabot went on to say how this 16-second clip from the Coldplay concert upended her life, though she still hasn’t watched the actual footage. In her words:
I became a meme, I was the most maligned HR manager in HR history. 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.
Astronomer found no evidence that Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot were engaged in an affair, and it’s mentioned in the article that both individuals were separated from their spouses at the time. Nevertheless, Byron resigned from the company just days after the video came out, and Cabot followed suit. She and him haven’t spoken since they shared “crisis management advice” shortly after the controversy.
Cabot later said in the interview that she continues to face backlash over what happened, including being told she is “unemployable.” Cabot also shared that she was “saddened” no one from Coldplay ever reached out to her or released a statement that might have helped lessen the blow on the damage the kiss cam footage did, which she believes Chris Martin “had helped manufacture.”
Should Gwyneth Paltrow release a statement responding to what Kristin Cabot said about her, we’ll pass it along. For now, you can see the former coming out of acting retirement to perform opposite Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme, which is getting great buzz from critics and opens in theaters on December 25.
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