He lied to me: HR exec caught on Coldplay kisscam turns on former boss

Kirsten Cabot and Andy Byron went viral over the moment filmed at a Coldplay concert. Photo / TikTok

The HR executive caught on a kiss camera at a Coldplay concert with her boss has claimed that he lied to her about his relationship status.

Kirsten Cabot, 53, a former HR manager at the tech company, Astronomer, was filmed in a romantic embrace at the concert in July with Andy Byron, who was CEO of the company.

As the jumbotron panned to the couple, Cabot covered her face while Byron ducked out of sight. The moment quickly went viral on social media.

“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Chris Martin, the band’s lead singer, said before the camera cut away.

Addressing the incident on Oprah’s podcast on Tuesday, Cabot said she had been in the process of divorcing her husband at the time, and she was led to believe that Byron was in the same position.

Cabot said she decided to end communication with Byron in autumn 2025 when she realised that he had been lying to her.

She said: “There was a big miss on honesty and integrity ... He wasn’t the person he represented himself to be to me. And lying is a non-negotiable for me.

“He missed the mark on being as honest as he could have been with me.”

Oprah responded: “What I’m hearing is that he really wasn’t separated”.

Cabot, who lost her job over the scandal, said she did not want to speak for Byron, but added: “A lot of what was represented to me was not true.”

Cabot said the concert was the first time the pair had touched romantically, and that while she had a “crush” on Byron before the event, nothing physical had happened until that point.

Oprah pushed Cabot again on whether she believed that Byron, who also resigned from his position over the incident, had been separated.

She responded that there had been “zero doubt” at the time, but that she had been “left holding the bag”.

Some have suggested that the pair’s reaction on the night was evidence of an affair.

Cabot has denied this suggestion, insisting she would have reacted in the same way in any setting.

She said: “I whipped around. If we were at a Celtics game and we got put on the jumbotron, I’m going to whip around.

“I’m not a jumbotron girl even on my best days. It’s not my thing. So I would have probably done some version of that, but in that moment, I was just horrified.”

In an interview with the New York Times in December, Cabot said the pair had told each other they had separated from their partners around a month before the concert.

“[My husband and I] were in the middle of an incredibly, and amazingly, amicable separation,” she said. “I was worried I would embarrass him. He’s an amazing guy and does not deserve that.”

Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.