BOSTON (AP) — Astronomer — the company whose CEO stepped down after being spotted on a KissCam at a Coldplay concert sharing an embrace with a woman not his spouse — is aiming to move past the controversy with help from someone quite familiar with the band.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who was married to Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin for 13 years, announced Friday on X that she is joining Astronomer as a spokesperson.
Astronomer, a tech firm based in New York, found itself in an uncomfortable spotlight when two of its exectutives were captured on camera in a close embrace at a Coldplay concert — an image that was then shown on a large screen in the stadium.
CEO Andy Byron and human resource executive Kristin Cabot were caught by surprise when Martin asked the cameras to scan the crowd during a concert earlier this month.
“Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin joked when the couple appeared on screen and quickly tried to hide their faces.
In a short video, the “Shakespeare in Love” and “Ironman” star said she had been hired as a “very temporary” spokesperson for Astronomer.
“Astronomer has gotten a lot of questions over the last few days and they wanted me to answer the most common ones,” Paltrow said, smiling and deftly avoiding mention of the KissCam fuss.
“We’ve been thrilled that so many people have a newfound interest in data workflow automation,” she said. “We will now be returning to what we do best — delivering game-changing results for our customers.”
When footage from the KissCam first spread online, it wasn’t immediately clear who the couple were. Soon after the company identified the pair, and Byron resigned followed by Cabot. The video clip resulted in a steady stream of memes, parody videos and screenshots of the pair’s shocked faces filling social media feeds.
Online streams of Coldplay’s songs jumped 20% in the days after the video went viral, according to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company.
