CEO at Coldplay concert: woman reports death threat – 12/21/2025 – Economy

Kristin Cabot comes to the conclusion that her silence is no longer useful. It made sense at first, after she appeared on screen, horrified, in the arms of her boss during a Coldplay concert on July 16, 2025, a moment that caused an international outcry. The original video on TikTok was viewed 100 million times in just a few days.

Cabot retreated, trying to make things right with the people who mattered most: his two teenage sons; his employer, the technology company Astronomer; and her second husband, Andrew Cabot, from whom she was separated and negotiating a divorce settlement.

At first, all she could think was, “Oh my God, I hurt people. I hurt good people.”

Five months after the viral video became the disaster of her life, she described in her first interview since the series what it’s like to be the butt of jokes and the butt. In online comments, she was called a slut, a homewrecker, a gold digger, a lover – the usual labels used to demean women.

Her appearance became a topic of debate, specific parts of her body began to be evaluated and considered insufficiently beautiful. Some of the most famous people in the world have turned their humiliation into material.

She was the victim of doxxing (disclosure of personal data with the aim of humiliating the victim) and, for weeks, she received 500 to 600 calls per day. The paparazzi camped in front of his house and cars drove slowly down his block, “like a parade,” Cabot recalled. He received death threats.

So even though #coldplaygate, as it is now known, has moved away from the spotlight, she lives with it every day. Her children are reluctant to be seen with her. Just before Thanksgiving, a woman recognized her while she was gassing up her car. He called Cabot “disgusting” and said, ““Adulterers are the lowest form of being human. You don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as me. » Cabot was already going through a divorce at the time of the video.

I visited his house in New Hampshire on a snowy weekend this month and we discussed the events of July 16 for hours. For weeks, Cabot had wondered – alone, with family and friends – whether he should talk about what had happened. Any attempt to rectify the facts exposes it to the risk of being destroyed again.

But Cabot, 53, came to want to tell the truth, and her children, mother and closest friends supported her.

She hired a communications consultant to help her get her message across while minimizing further harm to herself and those she loves.

We both started the day in the kitchen. Cabot, with her hair in a bun, was nervous, referencing topics as she revealed her story. She did not have a sexual relationship with her boss, he claimed. Before that night, they had never kissed.

“I made a bad decision, drank High Noons (drinks with vodka, juice and soda water), danced and acted inappropriately towards my boss,” he recalls. “And that’s not at all negligible,” he added.

Cabot came to human resources through advertising and sales and always presented herself as “hyper-professional,” said her friend Alyson Welch, who worked with her at the technology company neo4j.

When, in the summer of 2024, Cabot interviewed Andy Byron, then CEO of Astronomer, she found that they “understood each other stylistically.” She started as Astronomer’s Director of Human Resources in November 2024.

In the spring of 2025, while having a sandwich near the Astronomer’s office in New York, Cabot referred to her marriage “in a tone,” as she remembered it, and Byron asked what was going on. She was in the process of separating, she said. It was stressful and she worried about her children.

“I’m going through the same thing,” he said, according to Cabot. Reached by telephone, Byron declined to be interviewed for this article.

For Cabot, the commonalities “in some ways strengthened our bond,” she said, and a close working relationship became even closer. In the company, they confided in each other and made each other laugh, and for Cabot, the “strong feelings” grew quickly.

She began to allow herself to imagine the romantic possibilities, even though she knew she could not continue to report to Byron if the relationship progressed.

Cabot’s separation from her husband was still fresh when she agreed to go see Coldplay with friends. She quite liked the band, but what really appealed to her was going out with friends on a summer Wednesday (winter in Brazil). “I haven’t been out in a long time,” she told me. She invited Byron to be her date.

Before the show, Cabot and Byron met with a small group of Cabot’s close friends at the Stockyard, a traditional steak restaurant. The atmosphere of the evening was open and lively, agreed two attendees who asked to remain anonymous because of what they saw happen to their friend.

Was part of her worried about this meeting from an HR perspective? “Part of my brain may have jumped and waved my arms and said, ‘Don’t do that,'” Cabot responded. But in general, “No”. She was “thrilled” to introduce Byron to her friends. “I thought, ‘I can handle this. I can have a crush. I can handle this.'”

On the way to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Cabot learned via text that her soon-to-be ex-husband was also going to the concert. “It shook me,” he admitted. But she and Byron were “not a couple.”

Seats were on a VIP balcony with a wide view of the stage. Cabot remembers the room being dark and private. She and Byron each had a few tequila cocktails, and as the show progressed, they started to seem like a couple. She made a point of saying that that night was the first and only time they kissed. Byron was dancing behind Cabot when she took his hands and put her arms around him.

When Cabot saw his own image and his on the screen, it was like “someone had flipped a switch,” he recalls. “I will never be able to explain this in an articulate or intelligent way,” he said. What a moment before seemed “joy, joy, joy” turned to terror. Cabot’s hands went to her face and she moved away from Byron’s arms, who then ducked down.

At that moment, she had two thoughts. First: Andrew Cabot was in a dark part of the stadium and she didn’t want to humiliate him. And then: “Andy is my boss.”

Cabot and Byron fled towards the bar. “We were both sitting there with our heads in our hands going, ‘What just happened?'” Before leaving the stadium, they began discussing how to handle the event. “And the initial conversation was, ‘We need to tell the board.'”

Cabot owns an apartment in the Boston area that she uses when she has custody of 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 the complications of her amicable separation from Andrew Cabot, whom her children adored.

And then, around 4 a.m., Cabot received a text message. It was a screenshot from a TikTok.

She went to see her children, who were with their father in Boston. She wanted to tell them about what happened before they found out elsewhere. “They knew who Andy was, obviously,” he said, “and I said, ‘He and I got carried away for a while, and now it’s on social media.'” His daughter, 14, started crying.

Then she returned to her apartment for a conference call with the board of astronomers. During that conversation, she recalled, they said, “Look. We’re human beings. We all make mistakes. But you understand we need to step back and talk about it and figure out what to do.” The company quickly launched an investigation.

On Saturday, Byron resigned from his position. Cabot was not sleeping. He spent the weekend pacing, crying and talking on the phone. It seemed to him that every producer of every television news program was sending messages. At some point this weekend, Cabot suffered a data breach and his phone was flooded with messages.

She installed security cameras at her home and the local police increased their surveillance. After Astronomer completed its investigation, the company asked Cabot to return to his role, she said. But she couldn’t imagine how she could present herself as a human resources manager when she was the butt of jokes. She negotiated her resignation, which was announced on July 24. The astronomer declined to comment on the report.

The end of summer (winter in Brazil) brought some relief. Cabot filed for divorce from Andrew Cabot, who released a statement confirming they were separated at the time of the show and asking for their privacy to be respected. He did not respond to requests for comment.

“He’s just a gentleman,” Cabot commented. She found therapists for her children, who returned to school and were treated kindly.

She and Byron had stayed in touch all summer. They exchanged news from the Astronomer and updates on their families. In early September, they met and agreed that “talking to each other would make it very difficult for everyone to move on and heal,” Cabot said. Since then, she said, their contact has been minimal.

Cabot condemns rumors that she slept with someone to get ahead. She has worked since the age of 13, having decided that she never wanted to be financially dependent on a man or worry, like her mother, about any bills.

In the midst of the worst times, while hiding in her room, she had a fantasy of redemption. Cabot wanted someone with visibility and power to break the rotating, endless, relentless cycle. She longed for a rational voice to step in and say, “Wait a minute,” as she told me. “Can we start a conversation where there might be room for a different version of this story? This has really gotten out of hand.”