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Home » Oprah Podcast: w/ Kristin Cabot on ‘Coldplay Kiss Cam’ (Transcript)

Oprah Podcast: w/ Kristin Cabot on ‘Coldplay Kiss Cam’ (Transcript)

Editor’s Notes: In this exclusive interview, Oprah Winfrey sits down with Kristin Cabot to reveal the untold story behind the viral “Coldplay Kiss Cam” moment that swept the internet. Kristin, who was seen on the jumbotron with her CEO, opens up about the “ritual shaming” and death threats she endured after the brief clip sparked worldwide judgment. She clarifies the reality of her personal life at the time and discusses the devastating impact the viral fallout had on her career and her children. This conversation serves as a poignant look at the human cost of digital vitriol and the double standards often faced by women in the public eye. (Mar 17, 2026)

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction

OPRAH WINFREY: Hi there and thank you for joining me here on the Oprah Podcast. My guest today is Kristin Cabot. And while you may not recognize her name, I am guessing that you will recognize her face from the most viewed video of 2025. The so-called Coldplay Kiss Cam has been watched 300 billion times. Doesn’t that shock you? It shocked me.

And when I was told, your mouth is open, that’s exactly, that’s exactly what I did. When I was told it’d been watched 300 billion times, I said, “How is that possible? There’s only 8 billion of us on the planet.” Well, it’s because people watched it over and over and over. It was made into countless TikTok memes and recreated at sporting events and concerts around the world.

And in just 15 seconds of footage, Kristin found herself in the eye of a public spectacle. A storm that swept the Internet in a matter of hours. And she is the woman seen on the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert in Boston in the arms of her boss and CEO, Andy Byron. And Kristin was the head of HR.

And for Kristin, those 15 viral seconds — really 15 viral seconds — opened up an unstoppable floodgate of people mocking her, vitriol and even death threats. And this past December, she first broke her silence to Lisa Miller of the New York Times. And the headline read, “The Ritual Shaming of the Woman at the Coldplay Concert.”

Kristin Cabot, welcome. Thank you for agreeing to do this.

KRISTIN CABOT: Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Why Kristin Decided to Speak Out

OPRAH WINFREY: So after reading Lisa Miller’s article, I asked my team to reach out to you and you were hesitant. But then we had a conversation on Zoom and you decided that this would be the only on-camera interview that you’re planning to give. Why did you decide to be here today?

KRISTIN CABOT: Yeah, first, I want to thank you for having me. I was reluctant to come, but I’m really grateful to be here. For me, my mom always taught us silence as acceptance. I think I mentioned that in the article. And for me and my family, what happened was not okay. And I felt like by remaining silent, it was somehow accepting what had happened.

And I really felt also there’s a lot of people out there that experienced something similar that didn’t either have the strength to come forward or were too traumatized or lost their lives due to some of the things I experienced. And I feel a sense of responsibility for those people to speak out and share what it’s really like when people carelessly comment, click like, and the damage that it can really do.

Oprah’s Own Initial Reaction

OPRAH WINFREY: So, yes, you and I spoke on Zoom. I said, first of all, before the story and the times, I didn’t know the story. I was like everybody else. I didn’t watch it hundreds of times or even more than once, but I made the judgment that you had made a mistake and you’re out with your boss. And I did not know the crucial part of that story that was left missing from all of the TikToks that were shared. I’m going to let you share that. So take us back to the night of the Coldplay concert and the decision to go to the Coldplay concert.

The Backstory: Separation, Connection, and the Concert

KRISTIN CABOT: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I had been going through — I’ll go a little bit before that.

OPRAH WINFREY: Yeah, go before that. That’s okay.

KRISTIN CABOT: So maybe four to six weeks prior to the Coldplay concert, my husband and I had decided to separate and were living apart and planning for a divorce. And Andy Byron, my boss at the time, he and I had a very close working relationship. For anyone that’s worked in tech in a high-growth startup, they’ll understand that the chief people officer and the CEO are partners. We work side by side around the clock. It was a high-growth startup that was growing at 100% year over year. We were hiring like crazy. And so we were really in it together and spent a ton of time together.

And it was around the time that Andrew and I — my husband — had separated. And Andy, the same name, so forgive me. Try to keep up here. Andy and I had gone out to grab sandwiches during the workday, and he asked me — I seemed a little off, and he just said, “What’s going on?” And I said, “Well, my husband and I are separating and planning a divorce.”

And he immediately let me know that he was in the exact same situation — that he and his wife were living apart, they were planning for a divorce, and it had been many years in the making. So that became like a really instant kind of point of connection for us. And over the next few weeks to a month, that was a place that was really great for me to be able to go to talk about what I was going through, and I was a good, safe space for him.

OPRAH WINFREY: Did you both talk about what it was like going through the separation?

KRISTIN CABOT: We did.