Kristin Cabot is calling out Gwyneth Paltrow for poking fun at the Coldplay kiss cam scandal.
After Cabot went viral in July for getting cozy with then Astronomer coworker and CEO Andy Byron on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert, Paltrow, 53 — who was previously married to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin — appeared in an ad for the tech company.
Cabot told The New York Times in a profile published on Thursday, December 18, that she previously praised Paltrow for her work making Goop a company to “empower, support and uplift women.” However, Cabot was quick to discover that women were actually her harshest critics after the kiss cam scandal.
“What I’ve seen these last months makes it harder for me to believe that it’s all about the men holding us back,” Cabot said in her first interview since the scandal. “I think we are holding ourselves back tremendously by cutting each other down.”
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In the Astronomer ad, Paltrow joked that she had been hired “on a very temporary basis” to speak “on behalf” of the company’s employees. She answered “the most common” questions about Astronomer following the scandal. The screen displayed questions about the company’s social media team while Paltrow could be heard discussing their actual work in the background.
“We will not be returning to what we do best,” Paltrow said of the brand. “Delivering game changing results for our customers.”
The NYT piece revealed that Paltrow declined to comment on Cabot’s profile.
While women have definitely come for her online, Cabot wanted to make a very important clarification in the interview.
“I am not excusing the men,” she said. “Please don’t hear me say that.”
Cabot also discussed what really went down with Bryon during Thursday’s profile, noting that they bonded over their respective separations.
“I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” she said. “And it’s not nothing.”
Cabot made it clear that she was newly separated from husband Andrew Cabot when she and Byron kissed. In the video, Byron had his arms wrapped around Cabot who put her hands over her face and dropped to the ground, attempting to shield herself from the camera.
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“I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay,” Cabot 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.”
Both Cabot and Byron stepped down from their respective positions at Astronomer in the aftermath of the viral video. She told NYT that the Coldplay concert was the first and only time they kissed.
“I was so embarrassed and so horrified,” she told the newspaper. “I’m the head of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s, like, so cliché and so bad. We both just sat there with our heads in our hands, like, ‘What just happened?’”
While she dealt with the constant hate online, Cabot said she was waiting for someone to step in.
“Can we start a conversation where there might be room for a different version of this story?” she said. “This has gotten really wild.”
