What should have been a cute and innocent moment at a Coldplay concert turned into a supremely awkward and potentially scandalous PR nightmare for a tech CEO and his company’s head of HR.
A clip has gone viral showing Andy Byron, the CEO of the software development firm Astronomer, and Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot cozying up during the band’s show outside Boston this week… until they realized they were being shown on the Kiss Cam.
What happened next is already being used as a cautionary tale of what not to do if you find yourself in a compromising situation. And on Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Kmele Foster and Matt Welch, host of The Fifth Column, to discuss the mortifying scene.
The Viral Moment
This was no “paradise” for Byron and Cabot, who appeared to be in a suite with friends at the Gillette Stadium show in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Wednesday night when Coldplay frontman Chris Martin called for the kiss cam.
@instaagraace trouble in paradise?? 👀 #coldplay #boston #coldplayconcert #kisscam #fyp ♬ original sound – grace
As the camera panned the crowd, it stopped on the pair who looked quite cozy. Byron was standing behind Cabot with his arms wrapped tightly around her chest as she placed her hands over his. Their smiling expressions quickly turned to panic, however, when they realized they were on the jumbotron.
Byron let go and seemingly dropped to the ground out of view, while Cabot covered her face and appeared to say something to the woman next to her (who also looked uncomfortable) before walking away.
Martin, for his part, did not let the awkward moment pass. “Oh, what,” he could be heard asking from the stage. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.”
It appears to be the former, as Byron is believed to be a married father of two. And while he and Cabot have still not commented on the viral video, internet sleuths believe his wife has made her feelings known, reportedly removing her married name from her Facebook profile.
The Cover Up
Regardless of what is actually going on between Byron and Cabot, Megyn said their reaction was all wrong. “It was the worst cover up ever,” she said. “It’s like, Hello! Everybody knows to just act like you didn’t do anything wrong. You have to keep holding and then make it into, like, a dance. Like, ‘That’s all it was. It was a dance. It wasn’t an embrace.’ Do something other than turn and cower in humiliation.”
While Foster noted that he is very happily married to his wife and has never cheated, he invoked OJ Simpson’s infamous “if I did it” and offered his take. “If I did it… I sure as hell am not going to take my side chick to a stadium with 65,000 strangers and just kind of march through the crowd and go up to our box and then be holding her in a warm embrace at a Coldplay concert,” he explained.
“I think that the actual star of this story, though, is Chris Martin,” Foster concluded, “who decides – given an opportunity here to let these people off the hook and just let the camera move along – to suggest explicitly that these people are having an affair.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with The Fifth Column by tuning in to episode 1,110 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.