The woman briefly at the center of "#coldplaygate" says the internet punishment never really ended, even after the memes moved on. In her first in-depth interview, 53-year-old HR exec Kristin Cabot tells the New York Times how a few seconds on a stadium jumbotron with her boss at a July Coldplay show—as well as a TikTok that drew about 100 million views in just a few days' time—wrecked her career, strained her family, and turned her into a target of what she calls ritualized, mostly women-driven shaming. She says she and Astronomer CEO Andy Byron had never kissed before that night and weren't in a sexual relationship, though she admits she drank and "acted inappropriately" with her boss in public.
She also says Byron claimed he was going through similar turmoil in his marriage, though TMZ notes he was spotted with his wife in Maine, both wearing wedding rings, earlier this month. What followed, she tells the Times, went far beyond workplace fallout. Cabot was doxxed and deluged with hundreds of calls a day, including dozens of death threats. Paparazzi parked outside her New Hampshire home, strangers confronted her at gas stations and pools, and women she barely knew snapped photos of her and her children. Her kids, already navigating her separation, begged to leave public places and feared for their safety after overhearing threatening messages. Former colleagues cut contact.
Astronomer asked her to return after an internal review, she says, but she declined, believing she couldn't credibly lead HR while being mocked online. (The company declined comment; Byron, who also resigned, hasn't spoken publicly.) Cabot is now trying to reclaim her narrative and push back on assumptions that she slept her way into the C-suite. She notes that she has worked since she was 13, supported her family after a prior divorce, and long fought off unwanted advances in male-dominated workplaces. She's especially stung that, in her telling, women have been the harshest critics, and that Gwyneth Paltrow participated in an Astronomer ad riffing on the viral moment.
Cabot says she accepts fault for a bad, "cliche" misstep, but she rejects the idea that it warrants global humiliation. "I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss. And it's not nothing. And I took accountability and I gave up my career for that," she tells the Times. "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, she says, "you don't have to be threatened to be killed for them."
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