Christopher Nolan’s Peloton Instructor Hated ‘Tenet’ — and Accidentally Told Him That Mid-Workout

Shared grievances can bind people together for life, which is why nothing brings people together quite like complaining. During a recent virtual workout on Peloton, one of the cycling instructors enacted this great bonding agent — but it came at the cost of inadvertently making one session attendee the subject of their grumbling: Christopher Nolan.

“I was on my Peloton. I’m dying,” the filmmaker recently recalled during an acceptance speech at New York Film Critics Circle, per Variety. “And the instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Did anyone see this? That’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again!’”

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Oppenheimer, the suit-and-pipe-wielding blockbuster Nolan released last summer, is the longest of his career. Coming in at 180 minutes, it’s a likely culprit for the robbery of this Peloton instructor’s precious time. Then again, Nolan never specified a time frame for the incident. 2020’s Tenet was 150 minutes, while 2014’s Interstellar was 169 minutes. The end credits of Inception (2010) or Dunkirk (2017) could have also marked the scene of the crime. Those come in at 148 and 109 minutes, respectively (Dunkirk did feel ten times longer, though).

But of course, the Internet being the Internet, someone has already tracked down the Peloton instructor and surfaced footage from the very session Nolan caught this stray in. “This song is from the soundtrack of a movie called Tenet,” instructor Jenn Sherman said, talking over “The Plan” by Travis Scott. “Anybody see this shit? Did anybody see this besides me? Cause I need a manual. Someone’s gotta explain this, I’m not kidding. What the fuck was going on in that movie?”

Weights in hand, she continued: “Seriously, you need to be a neuroscientist to understand. And that’s two and a half hours of my life that I want back.”

“When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a shit on your film, he doesn’t ask you to work out,” Nolan continued in his speech, remembering the one-two punch of the session. It’s unlikely that the instructor realized he was in the session and decided to roast him just to spice up their day. Peloton employees aren’t known for being that petty, are they?

Either way, Nolan delivered this anecdote while accepting the award for Best Director. He’s fine — but he is just a little concerned about the low barrier of entry for film criticism. “In today’s world, where opinions are everywhere, there is a sort of idea that film criticism is being democratized, but I, for one, think the critical appreciation of films shouldn’t be an instinct, but it should be a profession,” he added, nodding towards the critics in attendance. “What we have here tonight is a group of professionals who attempt objectivity.”

Essentially, they do the opposite of what most casual viewers do on Letterboxd. “Obviously, writing about cinema objectively is a paradox,” Nolan clarified. “But the aspirations of objectivity is what makes criticism vital and timeless and useful to filmmakers and the filmmaking community.”

On Thursday night, Sherman responded to Nolan’s comments on Instagram, noting in a video message that it was a “huge day” for her. “I was excited,” she said of learning the filmmaker is aware of her. “And then I read the article.” Sherman went on to explain that the class in question was recorded in 2020 and it was a “dark time.”

She continued, “I may not have understood a minute of what was going on in Tenet, that shit went right over my head, but I have seen Oppenheimer twice and that’s six hours of my life I don’t ever want to give back.” She also invited Nolan to come ride with her in the New York Peloton studio, where he can “critique” her class.

Updated on Jan. 5, 2024 at 4:15 a.m. ET with Jenn Sherman’s response.

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