A Peloton instructor ranted about how she disliked the movie "Tenet." Christopher Nolan, the film's director, happened to take that class.
A Peloton instructor took time during a class to air her grievances about the movie "Tenet" — and the director of the film, Christopher Nolan, happened to take that class.
Jenn Sherman, an instructor who leads virtual workout classes for Peloton that can be taken live or on demand, played a song from "Tenet" during a cycling class in 2020. She asked the people at home streaming the class if they had seen the move.
"Did anybody see this besides me?" she asked. "Because I need a manual. Someone's got to explain this. I'm not kidding."
She kept ranting about the movie, a science fiction written and directed by Nolan. Nolan, 53, has received four Oscar nominations for his movies "Memento," "Inception," and "Dunkirk," and he is also the director behind "The Dark Knight" trilogy and this year's "Oppenheimer," a blockbuster that is receiving Oscar buzz.
But Sherman was not impressed with "Tenet."
"That's two and a half hours of my life that I want back. I want it back," she said as she continued to lead the virtual class. Unbeknownst to her, Nolan took that class and heard her comments about his film.
But that twist didn't come out until recently, when the director was accepting an award and decided to harken back to the time he was insulted during a Peloton workout.
"I was on my Peloton doing a high interval, some s***, I was gasping, dying, and the instructor started talking about one of my films," Nolan said while accepting the New York Film Critics Circle Award for best director for "Oppenheimer." He recounted what Sherman said about "Tenet," and joked about the harsh criticism.
"When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s*** on your film, he doesn't ask you to work out more with him," Nolan joked.
The quip made headlines — and Sherman knew he was talking about her. So she went on Instagram and issued an apology for her 2020 rant.
"This is a huge day for me, when I come to find out Christopher Nolan — one of the leading filmmakers of the 21st century — knows who the hell I am," she said in an Instagram video. "I was excited. And then I read the article."
"Listen, it was 2020, it was a dark time," she said, adding that she is known to run her mouth and was just making a random comment about a movie she had seen. "What do you think the odds are that the director of said movie would take that ride some four years later. Yeah. That would only happen to me."
"I may not have understood a minute of what was going on in 'Tenet,'" she said. "But I have seen 'Oppenheimer' twice and that's six hours of my life that I don't ever want to give back. So, Mr. Nolan, I'm inviting you to come take a ride with me at Peloton studio. You can critique my class, we'll have a great time, you'll sit in the front row and I promise you, it will be insult-free."
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Caitlin O'Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift.
