Kristin Cabot has come to believe that her silence no longer helps her. At first, it made sense: , scared, in her boss’s arms, during a Coldplay concert on July 16, 2025 — a moment that caused an international uproar. The original video on TikTok had 100 million views in just a few days. Cabot retreated, trying to make things right with those who mattered most: her two teenage children, her employer, the technology company Astronomer, and her second husband, Andrew Cabot, from whom she was separated and negotiating a divorce. In the initial phase, all she thought was, “Oh my God, I hurt people. Good people.”
Five months after her TikTok video became the disaster that defined her life, she spoke for the first time since the show about what it’s like to be laughed at and attacked. In online comments, she was called a slut, a home wrecker, a gold digger, a lover — the usual labels for shaming women. Her appearance was analyzed, parts of her body evaluated and found to be unattractive. Some of the most famous people in the world used their humiliation as a joke.
She had her personal data exposed and, for weeks, received 500 to 600 calls a day. Paparazzi camped in front of his house and cars drove slowly around his block, “like a parade”, he recalls. She received death threats.
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So while #coldplaygate, as it became known, has fallen out of the media spotlight, she lives with it every day. Her children avoid being seen with her. Just before Thanksgiving, a woman recognized her as she was filling up her car, called her “disgusting” and said, “Adulterers are the worst human species. You don’t even deserve to breathe the same air I breathe.”
I went to her house in New Hampshire one snowy weekend this month and we talked for hours about the events of July 16th. For weeks, Cabot debated alone and with family and friends whether she should talk about what happened. Any attempt to clarify the situation could expose it to further attacks.
But Cabot, 53, decided she wanted to tell the truth, and her children, her mother and her closest friends supported her.
She hired a communications consultant to help her tell her story while minimizing harm to herself and the people she loves.
We start the day in the kitchen. Cabot, with her hair in a bun, was nervous, consulting notes as she told her story. She stated that she did not have a sexual relationship with her boss. Before that night, they hadn’t even kissed.
“I made a mistake, I had a few drinks [da marca] High Noon, I danced and behaved inappropriately with my boss,” he said. “And that’s no small feat. I took responsibility and gave up my career for it. That is the price I chose to pay. I want my children to know that you can make mistakes, you can do something stupid. But they don’t need to be threatened with death for it.”
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Cabot came from advertising and sales to human resources and always presented herself as “super professional,” said friend Alyson Welch, who worked with her at the technology company neo4j.
In the summer of 2024, when Cabot interviewed Andy Byron, then CEO of Astronomer, she felt they “connected, in style.” She started as people director at Astronomer in November 2024.
In the spring of 2025, while buying a sandwich near the Astronomer office in New York, Cabot mentioned his marriage “with a certain intonation,” as he recalls, and Byron asked what was going on. She was going through a breakup, she said. She was stressed and worried about her children.
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“I’m going through the same thing,” he responded, according to her. Byron declined to be interviewed for this article.
For Cabot, this mutual recognition “strengthened our connection,” and the close professional relationship became even closer. At work, they shared confidences and made each other laugh, and for Cabot the “feelings grew quickly”. She began to imagine romantic possibilities, even though she knew she could not remain subordinate to Byron if the relationship progressed.
Cabot’s separation was still recent when she agreed to go to the Coldplay concert with friends. She liked the band, but what really excited her was going out with friends on a Wednesday in the summer. “I hadn’t gone out in ages,” he said. He asked Byron to be his companion.
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Before the show, Cabot and Byron met with a small group of close friends at the Stockyard, a traditional steak restaurant. The atmosphere of the night was open and lively, agreed two attendees who requested anonymity because of what happened to their friend.
Did she have any concerns from an HR perspective? “Some internal part of my brain was maybe jumping up and down, saying ‘Don’t do that,’” Cabot responded. But overall, “no”. She was “excited” to introduce Byron to her friends. “I thought, ‘I can do it. I can have a passion. I can handle this.'” On the way to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Cabot found out via text that her then-husband would also be at the show. “It shook me,” he admitted. But she and Byron “were not a couple.”
The seats were on a VIP balcony with a wide view of the stage. Cabot remembers that the environment seemed dark and reserved. She and Byron had a few tequila cocktails and, during the show, they started to look like a couple. She emphasizes that that was the first and only time they kissed. Byron was dancing behind her when she took his hands and hugged him.
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When Cabot saw her image and his on the screen, it was as if “someone flipped a switch,” he said. “I’ll never be able to explain this articulately or intelligently.” What once seemed like “joy, joy, joy” turned to terror. Cabot put his hands to his face and freed himself from Byron’s arms. He ducked.
At that moment, he had two thoughts. First: Andrew Cabot was somewhere in the dark stadium and she didn’t want to humiliate him.
And: “Andy is my boss.”
“I was so embarrassed and horrified,” she said. “I’m head of HR and he’s CEO. It’s so cliché and so bad.” Cabot and Byron returned to the bar. “We sat there with our heads in our hands, like, ‘What just happened?’.” Before leaving the stadium, they began to discuss how to deal with the situation publicly. “And the initial conversation was, ‘We have to tell the board.’”
Cabot has an apartment in the Boston area for when she spends time with her children, and she and Byron went there to strategize. Who would write the email? What would you say? In her mind, she saw the loss of her job and complications in her amicable separation with Andrew Cabot, whom her children adored.
And then, around 4 a.m., Cabot got a text. It was a screenshot of a TikTok.
She went to see her children, who were with their father in Boston. I wanted to talk to them about what happened before they heard otherwise. “They knew who Andy was, obviously,” he said, “and I said, ‘He and I got carried away for a moment, and now it’s on social media.’” The 14-year-old daughter started crying.
Then he returned to the apartment for a conference call with the Astronomer board. In the conversation, he remembers, they said: “Look, we’re human. We all make mistakes. But you understand that you need to step away and resolve this.” The company soon launched an investigation.
On Saturday, Byron resigned. Cabot couldn’t sleep. He spent the weekend walking around the house, crying and talking on the phone. It seemed like every producer on every TV show was texting. At some point, your data was leaked and your phone was flooded.
She installed security cameras in her home, and local police increased surveillance. After Astronomer’s investigation, the company asked Cabot to return to his role, she said. But I couldn’t imagine taking on the role of head of HR while being laughed at. He negotiated his departure, announced on July 24. (Astronomer did not comment for this article.)
At the end of the summer, some relief came. Cabot filed for divorce from Andrew Cabot, who released a statement confirming they were separated at the time of the show and asking for privacy. (He did not respond to requests for comment. “He was a gentleman,” Cabot said.) She found therapists for her children, who returned to school and were treated kindly.
She and Byron kept in touch throughout the summer. They exchanged news about Astronomer and updates about the families. In early September, they met and agreed that “continuing to talk to each other would make it difficult for everyone to move on and heal,” Cabot said. Since then, contact has been minimal.
Cabot wants to refute the idea that he got ahead by sleeping with someone. She has been working since she was 13, determined to never depend financially on a man or worry, like her mother, about the heating bill.
At the height of the crisis, when he was hiding in his room, he had a fantasy of redemption. Cabot wanted someone with visibility and power to interrupt the cruel, never-ending cycle. I wanted a rational voice to step in and say, “Wait a minute,” as he told me. “Can we start a conversation where there is room for a different version of this story? This has gotten out of hand.”
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