Kristin Cabot, a former human resources executive at data firm Astronomer, has publicly addressed the viral Coldplay concert incident that ended her career after she was caught on a stadium kiss cam embracing her married boss.
Cabot, 53, a mother of two from New Hampshire, spoke in interviews published Thursday by The New York Times and The Times of London, months after a 16-second clip from a Coldplay concert turned her into a widely circulated internet meme and ultimately cost her job.
Cabot was filmed on the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert with then-Astronomer CEO Andy Byron. The footage, which spread rapidly online, showed the two in a public display of affection.
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Byron was married at the time. Cabot said the moment followed what she described as a lapse in judgment.
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“I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot told The New York Times, adding that Byron had been her “big happy crush.”
“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.
Cabot told The Times of London that the public fallout had gone far beyond what she believed was warranted.
“I could have been struck by lightning, I could have won the lottery, or this could have happened,” she said. “But I’m not some celebrity, I’m just a mom from New Hampshire.”
“Even if I did have an affair, it’s not anybody’s business,” she added.
Cabot said the online reaction erased her professional accomplishments. “It has been like a scarlet letter; people erased everything I’d accomplished in my life and achieved in my career. This can’t be the final word,” she said.
She described becoming “a meme” and said the incident has left her “unemployable.”
“I was the most maligned HR manager in HR history,” Cabot said.
Cabot stated that both she and Byron were amicably separated from their respective spouses at the time of the concert.
She said she had been hired by Astronomer shortly before November and learned roughly a month before the concert that Byron was also in the process of separating from his wife.
“I wanted to put a cute outfit on and go out and dance and laugh and have a great night,” Cabot told the New York Times. “And that’s how it was tracking.”
She acknowledged having doubts before the incident. “Some inside part of my brain might have been jumping up and down and waving its arms, saying, ‘Don’t do this,'” she said, but said she ignored that instinct.
Describing the moment the kiss cam appeared, Cabot said she believed she was anonymous in the crowd.
“We were sitting in the back of the stadium at the opposite end from the stage in the pitch black, just feeling totally anonymous in an arena of 50, 60,000 people,” she told The Times of London.
“We were just dancing, I’d had a few High Noons. Andy was standing behind me, and we were dancing, and I grabbed him,” she said.
“I didn’t hear the announcement that the jumbotron was coming, so suddenly I’m just seeing us on screen.”
Cabot said she immediately realized her then-husband was also in the crowd. “My immediate reaction was, ‘Holy s-t, Andrew’s here,'” she said, calling the separation “incredibly — and amazingly — amicable.”
She added that her next thought was, “‘Oh God, Andy’s my effing boss,’ this is a bad look.”
Cabot said she briefly remained in contact with Byron to exchange “crisis-management advice” but has not spoken to him in months. She filed for divorce roughly one month after the incident went viral.
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