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Either they're having a affair, or they'll get this very shot.
This would be the only on-camera interview that you're planning to give.
Why did you decide to be here today?
So Coldplay's Kisscam just broke the internet?
Can you see this video, right?
1,000 times.
Yes, I think everyone has seen it.
Take us back to the night of the Coldplay concert.
Growing Fallout from the Kisscam moment,
seen around the world, sparking dozens of memes and videos.
It is crazy how big this is.
That was the first time you all had physically touched.
That's what you said to us earlier.
You hadn't even touched.
This has captured my imagination so much.
I have been watching it like if it was porn.
Over and over and over again.
I did not know the crucial part of that story
that was missing from all of the TikToks.
I'm gonna let you share that.
Sometimes people call just to harass her and call her a home record.
Do you still talk to Andy Byron, your former boss?
Death threats.
Who's sending death threats over this?
Why do you think there was so much hate?
Ah.
Hi there and thank you for joining me here on The Oprah Podcast.
My guest today is Kristen 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 Kisscam.
Either they're having an affair or they're just very shocked.
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 what I did.
When I was told it's 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 beams
and recreated at sporting events and concerts around the world.
And in just 15 seconds of footage,
Kristen 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 Jumbo Tron
at a Coldplay concert in Boston in the arms of her boss
and CEO Andy Byron.
And Kristen was the head of HR.
And for Kristen, 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.
Kristen Cabot, welcome. Thank you for agreeing to do this.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
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.
Yeah.
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?
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 forward, click, like,
and the damage that it can really do.
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
in your 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.
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I had been going through, I'll go a little bit before that.
Yeah, go before that.
So maybe four or six weeks prior to the Coldplay concert,
my husband and I had decided to separate
and we're 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 and 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 about around the time that Andrew and I,
my husband had separated.
And Andy, the same name, so forgive me.
He was trying to keep up here.
Andy and I had gone out to grab sandwiches during the work day
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 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.
And I think probably my friends.
Did you both talk about what was like going through the separation?
We did.
And that was where we started to build a bit of a stronger connection.
And I was really surprised when he told me,
we didn't talk a lot about our personal lives prior to that.
So I didn't expect to hear that from him.
Right.
He had been married a long time.
So I just assumed all was well.
So we leading up to the concert.
At that point, we started talking a lot more about personal things and kids
and how it's going and all of that.
In addition to the busy and frequent work conversations.
Were you having more lunches?
Was it becoming?
Yeah, yes, we were.
It just felt like a really familiar, safe place to talk about what was going on.
And it's so much easier when someone else is in it in the same experience.
We could share that.
So we developed feelings for each other during that time.
Because I'm sure.
Yeah, where you were attracted to each other.
Yes.
Yes, absolutely.
And that's why when people would say,
oh, they didn't look like friends on the video.
That was the culmination point of feelings that had developed over the course of four to six weeks.
So when we spoke over Zoom, you said that was the first time you all had done anything.
Yeah.
Yeah, publicly.
That's the first time you actually shared any kind of physical touch.
Physical touch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So at the co-play concert, the first time I touched you.
Yes.
I'll explain.
I'll explain.
I'm here to share what really happened.
Okay.
I know.
I know.
There's a lot of context there.
So I had friends that had gotten tickets to the show.
They asked if I wanted to join the two extra seats.
I never go out.
So it's kind of a joke amongst my friends.
Let alone on a weeknight.
I'm usually with my kids or I'm working.
And I had just gone through a pretty tough period.
And I was like, you know what?
It's summer.
It's a weeknight.
Like I'm going to go see, I love co-play.
I'm going to go.
Or I loved co-play.
That kind of got ruined for me.
I'll be honest.
It's not the biggest fan anymore.
But it was like such a no-brainer to invite Andy.
When I say we would talk like ten times a day, that was even before this connection started.
It's just the nature of our job and our working relationship.
Plus we were, you know, enjoying spending time together.
And it just seemed like we've been...
I just want to be clear.
What time had you spent together before?
Lunches.
We would lunches at work.
So everything had been business up until the cold by concert.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Though we had had a lot of personal conversation and had acknowledged that we had feelings for each other.
Okay.
Also, it was becoming apparent to me that we were putting ourselves in a situation
where it was going to get risky from a work standpoint.
I mean, I reported to him, it's...
My role was to actually be aware of those things happening at work and flagging when it might cause a problem.
So was there...
I always say that there's a whisper and then there's a pebble and a brick and a brick.
Was there a little whisper saying we should tell somebody or we should...
It was more than a whisper.
It was like a real conversation where we sat down and said,
like, we have to figure out a plan for this because these feelings were real.
This wasn't like a fleeting thing.
And we decided that we put kind of a plan together,
but we wanted to propose to our board of directors that would change the reporting structure.
Didn't you tell me that you were thinking about going to the board?
Are you always going to go to the board?
Yes.
Yeah.
We ironically met probably five or six days before the concert.
We had a lunch that was a lengthy lunch to talk about this.
Yeah.
And to make a plan.
And the plan was to go to the board.
To go to the board and let them know that we had developed feelings for one another
and that we wanted to change.
And that it was consensual.
It was consensual.
And which is an important point, a hundred percent.
And we wanted to propose a plan for what might work to make,
you know, take this reporting line out of the equation.
Meaning you reporting to him.
Meaning no longer reporting to him.
No longer reporting to him.
And we're reporting to one of our investors.
Okay.
Something like that.
All right. That makes sense.
It seemed like it made sense at the time.
Yeah.
It felt like the right thing to do.
And yeah, and then I got the invitation to Coldplay.
I invited him to come.
It was sort of a non-decision.
It was just kind of like, how we got tickets?
Do you want to come?
And it's like, great.
Let's go.
And I thought, you know, we've kept it.
Why didn't you ask one of your girlfriends?
Well, I was already going with my two best friends who may or may not be in the audience right now.
They were, one of them was already going.
And the other one is the one that offered me the tickets.
Okay. Yeah.
And it just, he's the one I wanted to hang out with.
We had a blast together.
Okay.
And we'd been keeping it together.
Like, I could go to work and be normal.
I can go to a concert and be normal.
Yeah.
Until I couldn't, obviously.
But it was just, it seemed like a fun plan.
Got it.
So he said yes.
He said yes, obviously.
Mm-hmm.
And this was the first time you all had done something socially,
other than meeting for lunches and discussing business.
Or having like drinks after work with colleagues and things like that.
Okay.
Yeah.
So you get to the concert and what happened?
Well, I was walking into the concert
and my daughter messaged me and said,
oh, it's so great that you and Andrew were both at Coldplay.
So she let me know that my estranged husband was also at the concert.
So I think it's very important.
This is what I did not know before the story.
And y'all can obviously didn't know either that she was separated from her husband.
And that her boss was also separated or said he was separated from his wife.
Did y'all know that?
No.
Okay.
All right.
Or that.
Or that her husband was there.
This is the thing.
So you get texted from one of your children.
Yeah, my daughter was like, this is so fun.
Great.
I was like, and in my mind, I thought, well, that's...
Is this going to be weird if he sees me with Andy?
Or are you running into him?
Yeah, if I run into him.
But then it was like, I'm in July stating.
There's 55,000 people here.
I'm probably not going to run into him.
But it doesn't matter.
I mean, I would have been better at the end of the day if I just run into him.
But he knows how closely Andy and I worked together.
He knows we social, like got lunches and drinks.
It was fine.
So he knew that there was a relationship there.
Yes.
He knows the nature of my work and the way I've shared desks with the CEOs I've worked with.
I think it's just a very close one.
And so it didn't matter to me anymore.
Okay.
I got to get to the moment.
You got to get there.
You all haven't touched.
That's what you said to us earlier.
We've been touched.
Well, we did that evening before we got, I mean, we started to touch before it was on camera.
But that, yeah.
Okay.
But that was the first time you all had physically touched.
Correct.
Correct.
Correct.
Other than like a, you know, tap, you know, when you're chatting with someone.
Okay.
Yeah.
So what made you do it then?
I had a really big crush on him, Oprah.
Yeah.
And so did he.
I mean, these, these were like really incredible feelings.
And I don't know women that could relate to this.
But I had been going through a really tough time.
I was coming out of a separation.
And it felt really good to get attention and affection from an awesome man.
Okay.
It felt good.
You're giving out a key point here that you shared with me on the Zoom.
High noons.
I would love to talk about the high noons.
Yeah.
Can we, can we take a moment?
Look, look at Gail going.
What is that?
Gail, Gail has, Gail has never drank anything other than what?
I like a good Shirley town.
Oh, she likes a good Shirley town.
So she just looked, I saw you look, what is a high noons?
I want to talk about the high noons.
Yes.
Because that became a big, big topic on the internet.
For some reason, I told Lisa Miller in the New York Times article that, you know,
I'd had a couple of high noons and we were dancing and we got swept up in the moment.
All you needed is a couple.
I only had two.
So what do I mean?
Two that make you feel like.
Well, that's what I mean.
Gail used to ask me all the time.
I see you getting yourself all licked up.
What does it do for you?
Yeah.
I'm not getting licked up, Gail.
It's just a botquatonic, OK?
Right.
So it does make you gail.
Alcohol makes you feel a little looser.
Frisky.
Frisky.
Frisky.
Not even frisky.
It's just a little looser.
Yeah, a little looser.
And my only point in mentioning it to Lisa Miller, had I known what would have happened that, you know,
because suddenly I'm blaming it on alcohol.
And suddenly, none of that is true.
I simply mentioned it to, like, set the tone of the vibe.
Yes.
You're at a concert.
It's summer.
A couple high noons.
You're dancing.
You're having fun.
Everybody, maybe except for you, Gail, has done that and knows what I mean.
It's just an easy, like, a fun feeling.
And that was the vibe that we had.
And that's why I shared it.
And, by the way, I think I did.
Well, Gail will have said, do you have a lemonade?
Yeah.
And could you add a dash of cranberry juice?
Yeah.
Ooh.
So wild.
So a couple of high noons.
Yeah.
You're feeling really great and you're at a concert and you love cold play and everything's going well.
It felt really good.
Yes.
It also, I should note, it felt really anonymous.
And I feel like I need to explain that too because it didn't look that way on the video.
Where we were was at the complete opposite end of Gillette Stadium from the stage.
We were in an area called, I think it was called the Pavilion, but it's a big general,
it's a sectioned off area where there's no seats.
It's general admission in this section and it holds about 250 people.
So we were in that area and we were kind of up at the front of the near the railing.
But we were with a group and with friends.
So we were dancing and talking and it was really dark.
And it just, we got very swept up and it didn't feel in any way that we were risking being...
And it wasn't even calculated where we thought to ourselves like, oh no one's looking.
Let's put our hands on each other.
It wasn't that.
It was just, it just was a natural...
Okay, so let's go to that moment that we have all seen.
Have you all seen it?
Okay, let's go to the moment we've all seen.
And so you're swaying.
I don't even remember the song.
Do you?
Yes.
What was the song?
Yellow.
Okay.
You...
Look, get...
Let's go.
Yellow.
I still love yellow gale.
Yeah.
After a quick break, Kristen Cabot takes us back to that moment.
She saw herself on the jumbo tron and what immediately went through her mind during the minutes and hours afterwards.
That's next.
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Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast and my exclusive interview with Kristen Cabot.
The woman caught on the co-play kiss cam with her then boss in CEO.
A viral video that's been seen around the globe.
More than 300 billion times.
This is her one and only on-camera interview she says.
So let's get back to it.
So you're swaying to the song and then you suddenly see yourself on the jumbo tron.
You turned around.
Mm-hmm.
He ducked.
Okay, so you see yourself, take us to that moment.
Yeah, that was a moment of total horror.
Is really the best way I can describe it.
My immediate thought was, oh my god, my husband's in the building.
He was there with someone else and I knew that and that was great and fine.
But he and I were in the midst of our separation, incredibly amicable.
Like to this day, he's been the one of the biggest supporters of me through all of this.
He's an incredible man.
And the last thing I wanted to do was embarrass him.
And that was my first thought when I saw myself in that moment.
Isn't there an instance when you're looking at yourself on the jumbo tron?
Because I remember Gail and I had gone to an event.
Gail Maria Shriver and I and for the Pope.
And there's Gail on the...
Remember you saw yourself and you said, who said red-haired woman?
Michael said, red-haired black woman?
That would be you.
And so, is there a moment when you say to yourself, oh my god, that's me.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, there was like a split second where it was like almost...
I mean, to me, it's like a surreal.
I can't even really remember.
But I do remember looking and being like, oh my god.
Like, I said worse than that.
I'm made in my head.
But my initial thought was, oh my god, Andrew's here.
And my second thought was, oh my god, I'm in the arms of my boss and I'm the head of HR.
This is a really bad look.
Yeah.
Everybody assumed I was horrified because it meant somehow I got busted having an affair.
Like, that is not what was happening.
I felt like those two reasons were big enough for me in that moment to be really horrified.
Did you even hear what was said later?
No, so I wanted to share that too.
So we were all like dancing and you know when there's music playing, you're talking
you're kind of whispering in people's ears or yelling in their ears.
We were talking with my friends too.
And we didn't hear Chris Martin say we're going to pan the audience.
Like, we never heard him warn that he was doing that.
And we never heard him say they must be shy or they're having an affair.
I had no idea he said that until like days later.
Or the next day, I don't remember from it was a blur after that night.
But I didn't know that at all.
I whipped around like Oprah, if we were at a Celtics game and we got put on the jumbo tron, I'm going to whip around.
I'm not a jumbo tron girl, even on my best days.
It's not my thing.
Yeah.
So I would have probably done some version of that.
But in that moment, I was just horrified at.
And your first thought was Andrew.
Andrew, your husband.
And my job.
And your job.
Yeah.
And irony of the whole thing or the naivete of the whole thing is the entire ride home.
We were in an SUV, a group of us.
I was all I was worried about was Andrew.
I kept saying maybe he left early, maybe he didn't see it.
That was what I thought was the biggest problem I had in my hands.
Why were you worried if you were already separated?
Because we were in the middle of going through our divorce planning.
And it was going real, we were doing it in a really amicable way.
He was there with somebody.
He was there with somebody.
But I didn't.
Andrew comes from an incredibly private family in the Boston area.
And I just knew in my head like the public embarrassment is not something that would have gone over well.
Okay.
So your first thought was Andrew.
What did you all do immediately afterwards?
So you turned around and Andy Byron ducked your boss at the time.
Ducked.
Yes.
And then did you all immediately leave this?
Yeah.
So he and I left the area, the general admission area behind that had indoors,
had like a bar area and some like tables set up.
Did you leave with your friends or did you?
No.
He and I left the standing room area, went through the doors and sat down at one of those tables.
And we're just like, what just happened?
Okay.
What is going, what could this, what is going to happen?
And or what, what is, what happened?
Yeah.
I don't know how to do this way.
And that's when I was like, oh my god, Andrew.
You know, he was going through his head of what he was worried about.
I was thinking about my stuff.
And it was really towards the end of the concert and about the end of that song, I think,
my friends came through the door and they're like, let's just get out of here.
And so we all left the stadium.
And what were they thinking?
They were just like, oh my god, I cannot believe this is like getting struck by lightning.
How did this even, how on earth?
And I can't believe that just happened to you.
That's like the worst luck.
And then we were in the elevator heading down.
And a woman in the elevator was like, wait, was that you on the jumbo tron?
And I was like, no.
And then my friend Elena looked at me and was like, is that what we're saying?
I was like, we're saying, no, that wasn't you.
So we should be huddling up on this.
But we just didn't know what, we had no concept that this was going to happen.
Okay, so you were worried about your husband who you were separating from.
Yes.
And the woman that he's there.
I wasn't really worried about that.
I was just why I didn't want to embarrass him.
And I didn't want it to be a real husband.
You were worried about your husband that you are now separated from.
Was he worried about anything?
No.
Do you mean Andy?
Andy, Andy, Andy Byron.
Oh, yes.
What did he say he was worried about?
I mean, I don't want to speak for him.
But I think, you know, we live in that area.
I think, you know, he's going through his own separation of divorce.
I think he's not looking to embarrass us.
That was the other big.
I mean, it's really not, it's really bad in our roles to have been caught in that position.
Yeah.
And that was, you know, we do live in the area.
The company was based in New York, but we've both had 25 or so, 30 years in our career in that area.
The one thing I want to share with you all, when I had, I've only had one other conversation with Kristen on Zoom,
prior to this interview, a couple of months ago now.
Yeah.
And the one thing that I appreciated in that conversation, which you can share here, is that you kept saying,
I made a mistake.
It was a mistake.
I shouldn't have been out with my boss, but it wasn't a mistake that I deserved to die for.
Correct.
It wasn't a mistake that I deserved to have people coming up to me on the street and saying,
I should die because of it.
It wasn't a mistake that deserved people threatening me and threatening my children.
It was a mistake.
So that's what you told me.
That's right.
Do you still feel that?
Absolutely.
It was a mistake.
Absolutely.
I've been telling anyone that will listen.
I own the poor decision that I made in that moment, and I've paid an unimaginable price for that.
I also, you know, that was why I chose to leave my job, because I think I put the company in a position,
given how viral and toxic this became a position you can't come back from.
Okay.
So let's go back to it.
So walk us through it.
You all leave.
You're like, what just happened?
Yes.
And then what happened?
So we all piled into a SUV.
We had all ridden together and there were six of us.
Yeah.
And I mean, it was a pretty tense car ride home, but it was, I was hand-ranging over my Andrew C.
I mean, it was just a ridiculous looking at it now, what I was most worried about.
And he was pretty quiet in the car.
Yeah.
And our friends, nobody, nobody thought it was like, oh, that was such bad luck.
Like, hopefully no one really saw it.
Okay.
So tell everybody you get home and you thinking we were going to tell the board tomorrow.
Yes.
We're going to go to the board and tell them.
Yes.
So you all come, didn't you come up with it?
He came to my apartment.
Yes.
And he did.
Yes.
And we were like, we have to come up with a statement.
We have to talk to the board immediately.
Yeah.
Did you come up with a statement?
No.
We drafted an email together to send the board from both of us to say we need to speak very first thing
in the morning.
Most of our board, actually, all the one around the west coast.
So we wanted to make sure they were drafted an email to send to the board.
That's right.
And then you go home and you go to sleep.
Go to sleep.
And again, not really anything.
And in the middle of the night.
In the middle of the night, I got a message from Andrew, my husband.
I feel like I need to keep qualifying because they're the same name.
Yes, of course.
Yeah.
And he sent me a text with a snapshot of a TikTok of the TikTok video and said,
I don't remember the exact words, but it was like, there's like Houston.
We have a problem here.
And he really wanted to get to me so I could get to my kids before they were teenagers,
before they woke up and got on their phones and saw it.
Right.
So your teenagers are not his children.
Correct.
Yes.
But your children have a great relationship with them.
Incredible.
Yeah.
Because you all had been married how many years?
Less than two years.
Okay.
We met during COVID and he immediately built an incredible bomb with my kids.
And they're very close still today.
Okay.
So how did you find out that the video had blown up the internet?
I'm trying to remember.
It's like such a wild that next day was so hard.
So when Andrew calls you and says,
there's like, this is happening on TikTok.
I'm not on any of those apps.
So I didn't see it.
I couldn't see it personally.
I had no sense for it initially personally.
I've never had TikTok or anything like that.
But he let me know what it was.
Yeah.
And then in the morning by 7 or 8 a.m.
Can you all imagine this?
Can you imagine?
It just my phone started, you know,
a lot of phone calls started coming in from my friends.
All my close friends were just like,
you know, this is something's going on here.
And I wish I could remember how long it took
from being kind of a problem to like realizing
it was no need to hit send to the board.
Yeah.
Well, we did.
We did have a call with the board immediately.
And they had already heard about it at that point.
But we had, they were, they were actually really understanding
and we had a really good conversation about it.
And they were very, he resigned.
He hadn't resigned yet.
He did that a few days later.
Okay.
And then did they offer you, they wanted you to stay?
Yes.
Yes.
They wanted you to stay.
Yes. They did.
How are you going to stay?
Well, that's the problem.
I mean, that was the conversation I had with them.
Had it not gone so viral and gotten so toxic.
I would have gone back in and taken the punch.
And stood up in front of the company and said,
you know, I'm a human.
I made a really poor choice.
But we're building something incredible.
And like, let's get back to it.
And hope that they would be okay with that.
But I had it, that was not an option.
I did not feel like I could go in and say,
hey, everybody like do as I say, but not as I do.
And I felt like it would put everybody
in such a bad situation.
And it just wasn't fair to the employees.
I appreciated that the board was behind me.
I appreciated, they did go through an HR investigation
and it yielded nothing.
And I appreciated that, at least internally there,
I got that support.
Yeah.
But it wasn't viable.
It wasn't fair to ask the employees.
So why do you think that this went off like a bomb?
Was it Chris Martin's comments in that moment
that maybe you were having an affair?
Was it the fact that Andy Byron ducked or that you turned around?
Was it that he was the CEO and you're the head of HR?
What is it?
I think it was, I fought a lot about that.
I think it was a whole combination.
I was a combination of all of those things.
I felt in the initial moments, I'm sure it was funny to people.
You know, I can appreciate that.
I've certainly seen funny things online and forwarded them
around and clicked on them.
I just don't think people think, people really stop and think about
there's real humans behind this.
There's a life there.
It is incredibly destructive.
And I've seen funny things and sent them around too,
probably not giving it a ton of thought before this happened.
I'm very thinking very differently now than I was.
But I think people thought it was funny.
I think our world is, you know, news is a really sad thing to watch.
I think we are constantly inundated with bad news.
I've heard some people say that that video's seen 300 billion times
by only eight billion people on the planet
was the thing that united people,
that people were united in their judgment.
And I feel bad for us as human beings,
that that's what we did to you.
Thank you.
We were all united in the judgment of whatever it is you were doing,
you shouldn't have been doing it, and we could all actually agree on that
without knowing the story behind the story.
And I heard that there were people that advised you
that everything would blow over in three days.
Who the hell told you?
I wish I could say, because you'd all be shocked,
but it's a very prominent person in public relations that I spoke to
that said to me, you have triggered such an avalanche of hate
for whatever reason that people are not going to be open to hearing
from you right now.
They're not going to believe what you say.
Your best bet is to stay quiet, keep your head down,
and then let some time pass, and then speak up.
This is not my world, I don't know.
And I really believed what she said.
I guess it makes sense.
I could tell that there was so much hate.
I thought maybe this, maybe that is better.
Right after this break, Kristen Cabot explains why she thinks
she's been the target of so much hate and vitriol,
and why her former boss, Andy Byron, was not.
That's next.
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Welcome back listeners.
It seems everybody on the planet watched that viral cold
play his cam video.
Kristen Cabot, the woman in that video agreed to talk with me
here on the Oprah podcast for what she says is her one
and only interview.
Let's get back to our exclusive conversation.
Why do you think there was so much hate?
That's been one of the hardest things for me to reconcile
because nobody knows me.
Nobody that judged this knows me.
So it wasn't me.
It was, I think it was, listen, I think a lot of people
have had not great interactions with HR.
I think there's some piece of it that's stick to the HR lady.
I get it.
That's kind of funny.
I think, you know, it was incredibly cliche on every level
like the CEO and the chief people officer.
And I think, you know, I don't know.
I just think people hurt people, hurt people.
And I think, where's a lot of her people?
200 billion times.
So the New York Times wrote that she's been called,
the quote, she's been called a slut,
a home wrecker, a gold digger, a side piece.
The usual tags for shaming women is what Lisa Miller wrote.
And you told me that you believe that women are apt to quote
each other alive and that most of your criticism has actually
come from other women, that other women are the only ones
who dare to come up to your face and say horrible things.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
That was for me, I think one of other than obviously my concern
for what my kids experience, that was to me the most upsetting
piece of all of this was I had no idea how unwell we are
as a gender still.
I think I was living in a really lovely naive bubble in some ways
where I have surrounded myself with and am so fortunate to be surrounded
by incredible women that have supported me through thick and thin.
I do the same for them.
And I don't know women that tear each other down.
That's not been my own experience.
And it worked.
Like I've been really intentional about the women that work
with and for me, like bringing them along in their career giving
opportunity, mentoring, and helping them.
It was just not, it was such a shock to me.
I think I was told that 90% of the online comments and hate
came from women.
Every single interaction I had in person and there were many
were all women, like you said.
You know, since we had our conversation, I was thinking about this.
And I say this, you know, not just because Gale was here,
but it's pretty publicly known that Gale went through a divorce
and her husband had an affair.
And Gale always says that there is a lot of members of that club.
There's a lot of women who are a part of that club
with partners who betrayed them with other women.
And I think that for a lot of women,
you became the face of that.
Do you all think that you became the face of the woman who took my husband,
the woman who would take my husband, the woman who,
that's where the hate is coming from.
I agree with that.
And I also think that if you look differently,
you would have probably had another outcome.
You know, I think you are the blonde,
ideal, the girl next door, all of that.
Am I being truthful here or what?
I think it's the whole package.
It's not one thing, it's everything.
I do think there was something people attached to me
that triggered things within themselves.
I don't think, you know, now that I say,
they don't know me, it can't really be me,
but it's something I represent.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that, you know, I think about my own triggers
and things that are like unhealed inside of me.
I try to think of like, what makes me feel a certain way?
It's my own fears that are not quite healed, I think,
when I...
So the question is, did he get the same kind of vitriol,
Andy Byron, your boss?
Were people coming up to him?
No.
Not at all.
Attacking him, attacking his children.
No, yeah.
And I mean, just thinking about, you know,
starting from the very beginning,
I was every single part of my physical appearance
was picked apart.
There were stories written about jewelry I was wearing
and who bought it for me and how much it cost
when one of my best friends as a jewelry designer
and I bought everything for myself that she made me.
And it's, you know, my hairdresser,
somebody found and that turned into a whole thing
where she was dragged for giving me crappy,
crappy highlights.
And she got lit up for that.
And just everything about how I looked,
to how I was dressed, to how I behaved,
to, you know, the sleeping my way to the top,
to the gold digger, to this, you know,
all the words that Lisa used, the husband's stealer.
By the way, that expression really bugs me.
And I'm not trying to make light, obviously,
of adultery.
It's not that, but this notion of women's stealing men.
Like, I would walk in and duct tape and zip tie a guy
and unwittingly drag him out and steal.
Like, the man has no role in this.
This is, you know, and for me, like,
I was the face of all of this.
There was no one talking about Andy's hair, shirt, watch.
There was no one questioning,
and maybe anyone here can correct me.
I never read or heard anything about,
wow, did he become a CEO by sleeping his way to the top?
No.
And that's all anyone would say about me.
It was unfathomable that I might have achieved and worked
and hustled and built a career I'm incredibly proud of.
That was not on the table.
Your best friend, I heard, told you that these people
hated you before they even knew anything about you.
Do you think that's true?
What do you think that is?
Yeah, I think that's what you touched on a few minutes ago.
I think it's, I represented something for people
that they were afraid of in that moment.
And I can have empathy for that.
I think if you're going to snap to a judgment,
you're going to have, I don't have empathy for people
snapping to a quick judgment and just assuming
and using zero critical thinking skills.
But I do have empathy or I do have understanding
for why that would trigger people.
So I'm trying to...
Because you look like you look.
No, because I think, you know, I'm the way the story
was narrated for me without my input was I'm, you know,
having an affair with my boss and we're running around
and we're on the company credit card.
It's probably what a lot of women worry about
when their husbands are out on work.
You know, I get that.
I can understand that.
Yeah.
So you share custody of your two children
with your first husband.
And how has this impacted your children?
That's the tough one.
It was a nightmare.
How old are your kids?
They're almost 15 and almost 17.
So they're at an age where every, you know,
they were 14 and 16 when this happened.
14 and 16.
We're still in it.
They're really, they're doing really well.
I was about the place you went someplace.
You went someplace and your daughter said,
Mom, can we just leave?
Because...
Yeah, we were at the local pool.
This was a few weeks after I decided it was probably
in later August when I felt like safe to try trying to
going out, you know, trying to go out.
My daughter and I went to the pool.
Big hack glasses, all the things.
And a woman at the pool started taking our picture
in a really not subtle way.
And my daughter just, she just lost it.
I think we need to just leave.
And I was like, I'm so sorry.
And I didn't, you know, I was not in a position.
That's funny.
The version of me before this concert,
I would have marched right up to her and grabbed her.
I mean, I'm not a shrinking violet.
But I became, you know, a very different version of myself.
And I just, we packed up and left.
Do you think that you were taking on the guilt and shame
that other people were trying to put on you?
Yes and no.
I felt tremendous guilt for the fact
it was having on my family.
And I felt responsible for that.
But I did not, I knew what really happened.
And I didn't feel shame for something I didn't do.
I wasn't questioning my, I knew the mistake I made.
I was really clear on what that was.
But I was also really clear that it doesn't deserve the treatment
that I got.
It doesn't deserve, you know, being made to feel that you should die.
Can you share with us what those first hours, days,
and then weeks were like?
I mean, how low did you go?
I mean, yeah, those, it was dark.
The first weekend after the concert,
I rented an Airbnb and went up to the mountains in New Hampshire
with my dog thinking I was just going to let it blow over
and come back.
I really didn't understand,
because I cut off all access to the internet
and social media and everything.
I went away thinking, oh, it was sort of like the beginning of COVID
when you're like, well, close the office for the week
and we'll see in a week and then you're like, see you in two years.
It was sort of like that.
I thought I'll just go and disappear for the weekend.
But when I came back.
I do a self-care day.
I did. Yeah, I was like, I'm just going to regroup and relax
and not look.
And you thought it would blow over in a few days as you had been told.
Because I've been told.
Yes. That definitely didn't happen.
I came back to my house that was a place that was really like my safe space
as home typically is.
And it became a place that was as unsafe as any place could be
because a local radio station gave out my address on the air.
And for whatever reason, the whole world has access to my phone number
and I guess that I don't know how people do that.
So from that day I returned.
There was, well, there was paparazzi there for weeks.
They wouldn't leave.
There was, I had people trespassing and looking in my windows.
We had people doing drive-by's and yelling and honking.
We had my phone.
With your children home.
Yes, with my children home.
My phone was ringing around the clock
and just vile text messages and voice mails.
That's probably a couple days in when the death threats started.
But they were also just perverse disgusting messages.
I've got emails constantly.
Were you afraid?
Were you scared?
Yeah, I was terrified.
And your children were really scared
because your children overheard you speaking to your mom?
They did and they heard one of the death threats.
My kids asked me not to spend too much time talking about them today.
But I'm comfortable talking about portions of it and that's one of them.
They were terrified for me.
They're really protective of me.
But they were also really scared for what this meant for all of us.
We're not used to having, we're really private.
When your kids are hearing that you're getting death threats,
kids think we're going to lose our mom.
That's what kids think.
That's exactly what happened.
Kids think we're going to lose our mom.
Then they have to now be afraid for you.
That's right.
I've been a single mom for a while.
I think already lean in to taking care of me more than I'd like them to do with their age.
I've got it until I'm good.
They've always been really sweet and I don't know, empathic people.
They're always keeping an eye and making sure I'm okay.
This elevated all of that.
I think a lot of people at this point have experienced online vitriol
or people saying horrible things.
Sometimes there's something that just is said and it just cuts you.
Especially if it's untrue.
Do you have one of those moments where something was said
and it just brought you to your knees
or you made you not want to get out of bed?
There's actually a few.
The one that just came to mind first was the piece around sleeping my way to the top at work.
I've worked in advertising and technology,
which are really male-dominated industries.
I've spent my entire career fighting against the stereotype of,
I must be sleeping with someone.
I've been so intentional about how I move through my work life.
I've never been involved with anyone I've worked with before.
I've been working since I was 13.
My mom had a really legally working early on and I never stopped.
My career was my identity for better or worse.
This has been a wake-up call around that.
That was my tremendous pride in what I had built.
I love what I do.
To be a whole entire narratively written that takes that away from me felt
it just gutted me in a way that I can't explain.
It was really that one.
I think obviously being called all these horrible names is it hurts.
I have a friend that said to me recently,
why would you take criticism from people you would not take advice from?
That really hit home for me.
I thought about it.
It's a great point.
It's a great point, but when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to feel that.
That's right.
It hurts.
It's easy to say, oh, ignore the trolls.
It's really hard to ignore that.
It gets really personal.
Did you have family that were there for you?
My family is incredible.
You asked earlier how low did it get?
I do need to say that if I didn't have the family that I have
and the friends that just wrapped a big warm blanket around me,
I don't know that I would have made it through this.
Had I been the 25-year-old version of myself,
I would not be sitting here.
There's no way.
It was really horrific.
When you hear the number, I think it was you who told me that
300 billion.
When you hear the 300.
That doesn't include social media.
That's just the internet.
How wild did it get on?
I don't know how wild it got on social,
but I think it was wilder than just different tabloid websites.
But that 300 billion is on the websites alone.
It's really disturbing.
How did you get your children through it?
When you become the meme and everybody knows it's your mom?
How did you get them through it?
It was tough.
We had a lot of conversation.
In the beginning, I was not momming to the best of my abilities.
I was pretty broken down.
We had, for better or worse, we had a lot of family visiting last summer.
A lot of people staying at my house.
My brother and his family and a lot of guests.
I tried to pivot to life as usual as best I could after maybe the first month.
We tried to just get back to it.
Go to the beach, try to do some normal things.
It was hard because people were not shy to come up to me in front of my kids.
I had a group of women that I was at my son's where he works.
He works at a surf shop at the beach near our house.
A group of women surrounded my car in front of my son and started to harass me verbally
and make it hard for me to move my car away from where they were.
It was hard to explain that to my kids.
They were really lucky to have their peers show up for them in a really supportive way.
But they were struck by how horrific grownups were acting.
That's a really hard thing for me to explain to kids.
Do they even understand why?
Yeah, because how do you explain to them why the people are hating you so much?
I tried to explain to them what you described.
I think I'm representative of something that touches a lot of fear in people.
I didn't know.
I was trying to figure it out myself.
I wish I could have showed up for them in better ways than I did.
But I did the best I could do in those moments.
It was really hard going back to school for them was really hard.
They didn't want me on their campuses for the first semester or trimester.
So I missed, you know, I didn't go to games.
I didn't go to parent conferences.
I couldn't go to parents weekend at my son's school.
But the schools were wonderful.
I worked with them closely to make sure the kids were supported.
And like I said, their friends were great.
Up next is Kristen Cabot still in touch with her former boss,
astronomer CEO Andy Byron.
She answers when we come back.
Welcome.
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From back to bike's exclusive interview with Kristen Cabot now,
two women in our audience share with Kristen Cabot
what they learn from our conversation.
Here we go.
Do you still talk to Andy Byron, your former boss?
No, I ended communication with Andy in mid-fall.
There was a big mess on honesty and integrity.
He wasn't the person he represented himself to be.
To me, lying is not a non-negotiable for me.
What does that mean, actually?
It means I don't, you know, there was...
He missed the mark on being as honest as he could have been with me.
And at the end of the day, Oprah, like, I was the one left only.
He wasn't separated.
Because what you're implying to me, what I'm hearing,
is that he really wasn't separated.
Is that what you're trying to say?
I want to be really careful because the world spoke for me and on my behalf
and I don't want to do that to somebody else in their family.
I don't feel comfortable.
But I will say, like, a lot of what was represented to me was not true.
Okay.
I also want to say that being left...
Well, will you verify, again, as you said to us earlier,
that he had told you, when you told him you were separated,
he had said to you he's going through the same thing.
Unequivocally.
Okay.
Unequivocally.
So you believed when you were standing with him at the cold play concert,
that he was...
Absolutely.
Zero doubt and zero doubt.
But I was left holding the bag.
And I don't...
Being the one that was attacked for this with...
He's remained silent.
To me, that's not a quality that I would look for in a friend or partner or a boss.
So we have no relationship.
What would you have wanted him to do or say?
I mean, the entire trajectory of this would have changed if he would have just made a quick statement
saying, my wife and I were separated at the time of the concert.
Just like my husband did.
But it didn't matter when...
It was great that Andrew did that, but it also...
I was still left with...
You know, the tone changed a little bit.
Okay, so she was separated, but he wasn't, so she's still a home record.
Okay.
One moment.
And it's...
One moment and one split second decision can change the trajectory of anybody's life.
Why do you...
You know, I'm always...
Whenever something particularly this big happens, I say, what are you trying to teach me, God?
I know.
You didn't have to use this big a lesson.
Yeah.
I could have gotten with something smaller.
Yeah.
Have you looked at this in the bigger picture of your life?
What...
Why did this show up in your life this way?
And what is it here to teach you?
Yeah, I mean, that's the million dollar question.
I think about that every single day.
And I do believe, like...
I got knocked off my course for a reason.
Like, there's something to learn here.
And there's bits and pieces that are coming into the light for me.
I'm really understanding, and I had no concept of this, how...
When something goes this viral, how the technology companies are benefiting from this,
and how we don't know that when we are forwarding and liking and clicking,
we are putting billions of dollars in their pocket.
And creating an algorithm.
And creating an algorithm that feeds it.
And the more pain someone like me is in, the more money they're going to make.
And it fuels it and feeds it.
And I think there's accountability there that needs to be looked at.
I think I'm heartbroken at how women are treating other women.
Like, I want to...
One thing I don't know the answer to yet,
but is like, how can my experience turn into something positive
to keep that conversation alive?
And try to figure out, like, why are we doing this to each other?
We're so much stronger together.
Why are we eating each other alive?
Yeah.
And holding each other back.
And why do we take such joy in seeing other people suffer?
Yeah.
It's really scary.
It's so interesting.
Once you've been through something like this, when you see somebody else going through it,
it creates an empathetic moment for you to want to reach out and say,
I know what that's like.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right. I did that.
I reached out to a family.
There was a girl who was...
I don't know if you heard about this.
She was four years old receiving...
Zillions of death threats because she was helping her dad,
who's a radio personally, pick out football teams.
Mm-hmm.
And she started to miss the mark on the choices
and people started threatening her life because she was screwing up their gambling.
Publicly, they were threatening this four-year-old girl.
And I reached out to her family and they were lovely.
And I mean, it's so scary what they're going through.
I mean, it's just...
It's happening all the time.
It's also...
My producer said that what Daryl Hannah recently released a statement
about what was going on in the Kennedy love story.
That's right.
Yeah, and...
I actually brought...
Okay, good.
Yeah, go ahead.
I could from that.
If anyone has...
If you haven't read her essay in New York Times this past week,
it's a beautifully written piece, but it struck me deeply.
And there was a part where she talks about how Jackie Onassis used to say to her,
like, there's going to be horrible things in the news.
It's going to...
Because Daryl Hannah was dating...
It was dating John of Kennedy, Jr.
And Jackie O said,
people are going to write horrible things about you,
but don't worry about it.
It'll be lining a birdcage tomorrow.
And the newspapers will be lining birdcages, don't worry.
And she wrote, and I quote,
this was from on the 6th of March,
in the digital age, stories do not disappear.
Yesterday's news is not tossed out with the morning paper
and lies live online forever.
They are archived, streamed, clipped, memed,
and resurfaced endlessly.
A dramatized portrayal can become, for millions of viewers,
the definitive version of a real person's life.
They think that's history.
That's right.
Yeah.
So that, I mean, that's exactly, like, I wish I knew Daryl Hannah,
so I could give her a huge hug,
but she what she wrote about was encapsulated my experience to a T.
Yeah.
So where are you now in the healing process for you and for your family?
You're supporting yourself, you're supporting your children,
have you started to look for work again?
Has Andy Byron, I hear, has gotten offers from other places?
Lots of interest.
Lots of interest.
And I think he has the luxury of staying silent,
and he can go back to work when he's ready.
I don't.
I feel, after my myself, I'm not on trial,
but I have to, in order for me to get back on my feet,
I have to come out and explain.
And I think that's a stark difference between the man and the woman
in this situation.
I have to explain and explain and justify.
And I feel like people, when I speak up,
they think I'm trying to be famous.
If I don't speak, I must be guilty.
So I'm trying to figure out the right balance there.
And for me, I'm, you know, I'm raising my kids alone.
I'm financially responsible for my kids alone.
And I need to get back to work.
Yeah, because people are going to criticize you for it.
Like, why are you talking?
Yeah.
If I talk, I'm trying to prolong my 15 minutes of fame if I'm not talking.
Yeah.
So again, you decided to talk because.
Because I felt, like I said in the beginning,
like, I can't stay silent and accept what has happened.
And I do feel like it's important that people understand the real story.
And also how harmful it is to just make assumptions and judge
and feed and fuel something that created this narrative.
But you're so right.
You know, I knew that Andrew had,
Andrew, your husband that you're getting a divorce from,
had made a statement saying that you all were separated at the time.
But you're right.
We never heard from Andy Byron.
And if Andy Byron had done that, it would have changed everything, I think.
Yes.
That's right.
That's right.
Don't y'all think so?
Everybody would have thought, oh, they're both separated.
Okay.
Still her boss.
Still HR.
Still not great.
Still not great.
But a lot less interesting to the general public.
Yeah, a lot.
And I think I do think, you know,
Chris Martin being a celebrity and that adding to it,
I think helped with this, you know, this thing going viral for sure.
When you bring a celebrity into the mix with private people,
I think it gives it more.
Yeah.
And before we go,
I said to you backstage,
which I do with all interviews that are important,
all interviews are important,
but not as important as you wanting to make this statement here.
I always ask people before every show.
And I've been doing this since 1989, actually.
I ask people before we go out, what is your intention?
Because I want you to be able to fulfill exactly the reason that you came.
Thank you.
I'm glad that you came.
I'm glad that you were willing to have your first,
and you say only interview with me.
But most important,
I want you to be able to say,
and fully not get home and say, oh,
I should have said,
she didn't ask me, what is it you feel that you need to say
or that you want people to know before we leave?
Yeah, I want people to know that I'm just a regular person.
I'm a private person.
I didn't ask for this.
I didn't ask to be famous.
And I have no experience dealing with all of this.
And I'm just, I'm a mom that takes my kids to school
and picks them up at practices
and tries to juggle work.
Or I was.
Work in parenting.
And I'm someone's daughter and sister and friend.
And I really want people to understand what happened.
And what harm it does to real people's lives
when you mindlessly feel a fire like this.
It's incredibly dangerous.
And I'm so grateful I have the tools I have
that I can sit here and talk about it
because so many people don't make it through it.
And it's tragic.
And I just, I want people to be kind.
And I, you know, it sounds especially women to women.
I know you were upset because you felt that there were other women
who came out and should have been more supportive, you felt.
Yeah, I just think we're holding each other back.
Like, let's stop.
And I think it's a conversation that needs to be had
over and over right now.
Like, what is going on with us as a gender
that give, you know, we take such pleasure
in holding each other back and hurting each other?
Yeah.
I heard you were upset when there was a commercial
that Gwyneth did.
Gwyneth Paltrow.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was really disappointing to me.
I felt like Gwyneth, someone whose company is founded on
or framed around uplifting women
and women's well-being.
And she doesn't need the money.
I don't know why she felt she needed to throw gas on the fire
and get involved in all of this.
It just felt really hypocritical to me and unnecessary.
And I think, you know, I don't want to let Ryan Reynolds
off the hook either.
He produced the ad, he created it.
And his wife has just gone through something really similar
over the last year.
And I find it really kind of astounding that he thought
this was a great way to lead, you know.
Well, I will tell you that I called Gwyneth
and I asked her about this.
And so this is an official statement, but I did ask her
if it was okay if I shared what she shared with me.
And she said that she was told that you and Andy Byron
had signed off on that commercial.
And she said she would have done it
if she hadn't heard that you had signed off on the commercial.
Had you signed off on the commercial?
No.
Yeah.
And she communicated that to me as well.
Okay.
Because she also said, I was going to say she also said
that she sent you an email
and that she hadn't heard back from the email.
So I just wanted to say that.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
So when that commercial came out,
did you feel that was just fuel on the fire?
Absolutely.
I mean, it made everything in that moment
and for, you know, ensuing days,
it made everything harder.
It was made at a lot harder for my kids too.
I think when the celebrity gets involved like that,
they're teenagers, like I said, they know who she is.
And it just added to it in a way that was so unnecessary.
But people have their own needs
and I can't speculate as to what those are.
So it happened and I can just...
And you're saying that you've been most disappointed
by the reaction from other women?
That's been the biggest thing for me.
And I don't know.
I wish I could fix it.
I wish I could understand.
And honestly, I'd love to sit with some of these women
that are so angry at me and really listen
and try to understand what it is about me
or what could I have...
What would they like to have seen?
You know, I don't know.
I'd love to have a real conversation
about what it is that makes them so angry.
We can make that happen if you need to.
I really would love it.
I'm being deadly serious on this.
I have a real need to try to understand
and have empathy for people that are hurting
and I'm feeling so much hurt that I can't fix it
but I would love to understand it.
That would help me heal too
to better understand why people are so angry.
Yeah.
Is there anybody here who had seen the video
who was angry?
Yes.
So were you one of those angry people?
I wasn't angry at you.
The first thing that came to my mind
when I saw that video was everything
that an darkness comes to light.
And I passed judgment and I take ownership for that.
It wasn't nice and it's not the type of example
that I should make for my children.
As a mom, I empathize with your plight tremendously
because unfortunately children are the casualties of these.
They take the brunt of a lot of this.
That's right.
But one thing that I think is really important
and I was the woman who was at home
and who didn't know.
Okay, after 17 years of marriage.
So when I saw that, it really hit home.
Yeah.
But the most important thing that I've learned
through my journey is that the only person
that can define who I am is me.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's really true.
But I also, as a person who is, you know,
throughout the internet,
people say horrible things.
There's no need for that.
Horrible things all the time.
And it is very, very different
if you're up on a Jumbo Tron
that becomes the most watched video
of the entire year.
It is.
And there is that distinction.
But for a person who's going through a very public situation
in their own microcosm,
which is a Jumbo Tron for them, it's different.
Again.
And so my apologies for the judgment
that I passed based on what I had read.
Because you didn't know that you was separated.
I didn't know that you were separated.
I didn't know that he was separated.
No.
It was because that's not, I went by the narrative.
Or that's a major factor.
But irrespective of that,
I would have never, ever, ever said something mean
or wish death.
I think that's just, that's just unacceptable.
But yeah, I think that for that.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
And thank you so much for being willing to admit
that you were in judgment
because the whole world was, actually.
And I would have to say that in this moment,
I think it's really important for we as the human species
to look at how we are participating
in the comments and the global discussions
because does a person deserve death threats
because they made a mistake?
Think of all the mistakes we've made in our lives.
Think of all the things you wish had not been seen
or you wish you hadn't done that or said that or whatever.
And it gets replicated 300 billion times.
And now people are threatening your life
and the life of your children,
they're parked outside your house
and your number is all over the world.
I mean, just think about that for a moment.
Yeah.
I am really sorry that you had to go through that.
Thank you.
Thank you for allowing me to talk about it.
I know it took a lot for you to do this today.
I do have to say if I can interrupt
and I'm sorry, at the center of the trauma for me
is how women have treated me.
And it was really scary to come here
and sit in the center of a room full of primarily women
just kind of looking at me.
This is really, really terrifying.
But I have to say I do feel a lot of warmth in the room
so I want to thank the people here.
It was almost, I couldn't do it because of the audience.
And you still said yes?
Well, my daughter told me yesterday morning
when I dropped her at school and I was like, I'm so nervous
and she's like, Mom, this will be like therapy for you.
You can do it.
Oh.
And I was like, oh, thank you.
Yeah.
It does feel good.
Well, it does feel good.
It does feel good.
So I thank you for allowing me to be your first interview.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Those of you who are watching,
I'll see you next time.
Good job.
Good job.
Good comes all everybody.
Go well.
Good job.
Thank you.
Good job.
Good job.
Good job.
Good job.
Good job.
Well done.
Well done.
Well done.
Well done.
Well done.
Well done.
Well done.
Yes, you can take our picture, now.
Yes, you can take our picture now.
Yeah, appreciate it.
I hope you're like coldPAV anymore.
Oh my God.
Chris Martin, honestly, he's one of those empathetic people.
And he had known, he never would have done that.
The problem is, you both looked like you would have been busted, and so when you look
like you've been busted, you know, we didn't, those judgments weren't made out of nowhere.
Because both of you looked, oh my God, we've been conned.
And we have.
And we have.
But it's just not for what you've done.
Not for what you've done.
And you do want to work again, right?
I'm dying.
I'm so bored.
I like, I have so, I said to Gayler, I have so much gas left in the tank, I'm dying to
get back to work.
I don't.
He's done job offers and you haven't.
That's crazy.
But I do just want to say, like, me sitting here, I was getting chills from you speaking.
Like, it really, honestly, like, hearing your perspective, you know, seeing it on social
media, seeing all these different things and people making their own narratives, you speaking
out, I'm sure all the women in this room feel this way, like, after hearing your story,
like, we empathize with you.
Like, it really does.
Thank you.
I'm like, wow.
Thank you.
I'm really told it's fair.
Yeah, you did it again.
Thank you.
You can subscribe to the Over Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen.
I'll see you next week.
Thanks, everybody.
The Oprah Podcast



