Is Christopher Nolan ready to get back on the bike after being exposed to the Tenet criticism of Peloton instructor Jenn Sherman?
Unclear, following his comments backstage at tonight’s Golden Globes. “Nothing but love for Peloton…” the Oppenheimer filmmaker deadpanned when asked if he’d heard about Sherman’s apology. “I might just skip it for a little while, but thank you for your concern.”
Nolan first brought up his Peloton class encounter with Sherman’s Tenet talk earlier this week, while accepting the award for Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle. “I was on my Peloton doing a high-interval workout. I’m dying,” he recalled in his acceptance speech. “The instructor started talking about one of my films [later discovered to be Tenet] and said, ‘Has anyone else seen this? Because that’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again.’”
When Sherman heard about the filmmaker taking her class from December 2020 and hearing her remarks, she took to Instagram to post an apology video and offer an invitation. “Huge day for me when I come to find out that the one and only Christopher Nolan, one of the leading filmmakers of the 21st century, knows who the hell I am. I was excited…and then I read the article,” she said.
Sherman suggested that her criticism of Tenet was just an off-the-cuff remark amidst the “dark time” that was 2020. “I’m up on the platform teaching my little class and I’m running my mouth off, like I’m known to do. And I make a random comment about a movie I had seen the night before,” she said. “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.”
While acknowledging that she indeed understood not “a minute of what the hell was going on in Tenet,” Sherman went on to acknowledge that her experience seeing Oppenheimer twice is “six hours of my life that I don’t ever want to give back.” She then invited Nolan to work out with her in studio. “You can critique my class, we’ll have a great time,” she said. “You’ll sit in the front row and I promise you, it’ll be insult-free. Let me know. Take me up on it.”
Nolan was at the Globes tonight in celebration of his historical epic Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy as the inventor of the atomic bomb. In addition to Best Motion Picture – Drama, the film tonight won the prizes for Director – Motion Picture, Actor – Motion Picture (Murphy), Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (Robert Downey Jr.) and Original Score – Motion Picture (Ludwig Göransson).