The former human resources executive at the center of a widely shared Coldplay concert moment earlier this year is now speaking publicly about her relationship with her boss at the time — and where things stand today.
In new interviews with The New York Times and The Times in the U.K., Kristin Cabot said she is no longer in any meaningful contact with Andy Byron. She added that the two did continue speaking for several months after the incident first drew headlines.
Cabot and Byron were attending the Coldplay show with friends at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, on July 16, when they appeared together on the venue’s “kiss cam,” with Byron’s arms around her. Both quickly tried to duck out of view, and frontman Chris Martin quipped from the stage that they might be having an “affair.”
Cabot, who said she was already separated from her husband at the time, told the interviewers she believed Byron was also in the process of separating from his wife. Byron has not spoken publicly about the situation and has since been seen out with his wife.
Speaking with The New York Times in a piece published Thursday, Dec. 18, Cabot said she and Byron checked in periodically through the summer after the controversy erupted.
“Honestly, a lot of it was, like: ‘Hi. It’s 11 o’clock on a Tuesday. Any advice?’ ” she said.
She described their conversations to the U.K. Times as largely focused on “crisis management advice.”
Cabot said they met one last time in September. After that, she said, they agreed that continued communication would make it harder for everyone involved to move forward.
“Speaking with each other was going to make it too hard for everyone to move on and heal,” Cabot said they decided, adding that since then their communication has been “minimal.”
Cabot said she chose to speak now to push back against what she described as months of misinformation, insults and harassment. She said there was no sexual affair, and that they only kissed the night of the concert.
“I’m sure a lot of people will say, ‘This is such a dead story, why bring it back up?’ ” she told the U.K. Times. “But it’s not over for me, and it’s not over for my kids. The harassment never ended.”
She expressed similar concerns to The New York Times, saying she accepts responsibility for what happened — but believes the online fallout has gone far beyond accountability.
“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. That’s the price I chose to pay,” she said. “I want my kids to know that you can make mistakes, and you can really screw up. But you don’t have to be threatened to be killed for them.”
Footage from the concert spread rapidly, and both Byron — the CEO of tech company Astronomer — and Cabot, Astronomer’s chief people officer, later resigned.
After Byron stepped down, the company said in a statement that “our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met.”
Cabot said she was already divorcing Andrew Cabot, the CEO of a rum distillery, when she attended the concert. Byron, meanwhile, has been seen publicly with his wife — and wearing his wedding ring — since the controversy.
Byron has not commented publicly on his relationship with Cabot and declined to comment to The New York Times.
Separately, someone close to Cabot previously said that while she and Byron were close, there was no “affair.”
“It was inappropriate to be hugging your boss at a concert, and she accepts full responsibility for it,” the source said at the time. “But the scandal, the downfall, the loss of the job — all of that is unfair.”
