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Kristin Cabot has had enough.
The woman at the center of the viral Coldplay kiss cam scandal is firing back after her former employer leaned into the controversy with a Gwyneth Paltrow ad that Cabot said crossed a line.
“I was such a fan of her company [Goop], which seemed to be about uplifting women,” Cabot told The Times. “And then she did this. I thought, ‘How dare she after the beating she got for all the conscious uncoupling stuff.’ What a hypocrite.”
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Gwyneth Paltrow did an ad for Astronomer after two of the company’s executives were seen on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert. (@calebu2/TMX; Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
In July, Cabot, who was head of Astronomer’s H.R. at the time, was seen in the arms of her married boss, Astronomer CEO Andy Byron, at a Coldplay concert when the band’s kiss cam found them. They quickly jumped apart, causing singer Chris Martin to speculate that they may be having an affair. The moment went viral overnight.
Soon after, Astronomer hired Paltrow to appear in a tongue-in-cheek commercial promoting the company — a move that stunned Cabot and reopened wounds from a moment that upended her personal and professional life.
Cabot’s anger appeared rooted in what she saw as a betrayal of Paltrow’s carefully cultivated image as a women-first wellness mogul.
According to The Times, Cabot got rid of her Goop products in protest. (Getty Images)
Paltrow, who famously popularized the term “conscious uncoupling” during her divorce from Martin, has long positioned herself as a voice for empathy and self-awareness.
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According to The Times, Cabot got rid of her Goop products in protest.
Digital has reached out to Paltrow for comment.
Coldplay’s Chris Martin is Gwyneth Paltrow’s ex-husband. (Christopher Polk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBC)
The Coldplay concert moment quickly exploded into an internet firestorm, spawning memes, speculation and intense scrutiny. What some online treated as a joke, Cabot has described as a life-altering incident with real-world consequences.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Cabot opened up about how a “couple of High Noons” led her to the now-infamous moment and detailed the fallout that followed.
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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 said.
“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin joked after seeing Cabot and Byron on the kiss cam. (@calebu2/TMX)
“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. 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.”
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Cabot was separated from her husband when her moment with Byron went viral, and she has since filed for divorce. It appears Byron is still married. (Getty Images/@calebu2/TMX)
Cabot, who was separated from her husband at the time of the concert, said that she’d received death threats because of the kiss cam footage.
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After the video from the concert went viral, Byron was placed on leave, and then later resigned from the company, as did Cabot.
Cabot said the scandal upended her family’s lives, but she and her children are now finding a measure of peace as they work to move forward.
