A Peloton instructor unwittingly bashed a Christopher Nolan movie while he was in the class; everyone thinks its Tenet

Imagine you’ve been working so hard on a project for months that all you want to do once it’s done is burn off any remaining stress by hopping on a stationary bike and getting a nice bit of exercise in.

Now imagine that, in the middle of your ride, an instructor comes on the screen to tell you how awful your work was. You’d have to feel a bit like Tim Robinson in the Brian’s Hat sketch.

That is precisely what famed director Christopher Nolan said happened to him. In the middle of a Peloton class, his instructor went off on a tangent about one of Nolan’s projects — Nolan didn’t say which one — calling it a complete waste of time while very likely unaware that Nolan was in the class.

The 53-year-old director recalled the story while accepting an award for best director for Oppenheimer from the New York Film Critics Circle. According to Variety’s Zack Sharf, Nolan was praising professional film critics when he dropped in this nugget:

Nolan summed up his appreciation for film criticism by telling a story about how he was once using his Peloton for a workout class only to have the instructor pan one of his movies. The Oscar nominee did not disclose which film it was, but clearly the Peloton instructor had no idea Nolan was in his virtual class that day.

“I was on my Peloton. I’m dying. 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!’” Nolan said. “When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a [expletive] on your film he doesn’t ask you to work out!”

Fair enough!

Of course, the internet couldn’t just let the fun little anecdote stand on its own. Immediately people began to wonder which film the instructor could’ve been talking about and a clear consensus emerged: Tenet.

The 2020 film staring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson is still dividing audiences due to some plot holes that made the story a bit difficult to follow — though it clearly still has some passionate supporters.