The man who starred in the much-maligned holiday Peloton commercial has spoken out about his new life as “Peloton Husband.”
Sean Hunter, an actor and elementary school teacher in Vancouver, Canada, plays the husband who gifts his wife a Peloton for Christmas in the controversial ad, which reportedly caused the fitness company’s market value to plummet $942 million in one day. In a recent interview with Psychology Today, Hunter addressed his newfound notoriety as Peloton Husband, saying, “The aftermath of the commercial has left me with more questions than answers.”
The ad, in which the man’s wife documents her yearlong “fitness journey” throughout a series of videos she later plays for her husband, has become a point of both widespread criticism and ridicule on social media, where viewers have pointed out that the woman — dubbed “Peloton Wife” — looks deeply terrified throughout the ad and behaves as if she’s been coerced into performing a grueling fitness regimen by her husband.
While Hunter seems to have embraced the role, even claiming the Instagram handle @pelotonhusband, the actor has expressed some concern about the potential repercussions of becoming, as one of his friends put it, “a symbol of the patriarchy.” One of Hunter’s concerns involves the apparent dissolution of his identity into Peloton Husband, who, it’s become increasingly easy to forget, isn’t actually a real person.
That face you make when you have to videotape yourself exercising to prove to your husband that you're making every effort to (checks notes) look thin for him. #peloton pic.twitter.com/Hq6stoiETH
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) December 3, 2019
“The problem is that viewers can mistake an actor as that person after they’ve seen them on television instead of a person given a script with no opinion on what they are being told to portray,” Peloton Husband Hunter told Psychology Today.
“I pride myself on being a great teacher and developing actor, and I can only hope that this affects neither,” he continued. “I currently sit here hoping that I’ll be able to continue auditioning for commercials without any taint, and that if my students happen to find the commercial and recognize me, they won’t think about me any different.”
Somehow I think Peloton Husband and his newfound internet virality are going to be just fine.
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