Show of hands, who had “naked Christopher Meloni starring in a new Peloton ad” on their internet bingo card for the week? The fitness brand dropped a new commercial today featuring the star of “Law & Order: Organized Crime” working out completely in the nude, proving that you never do know what a Thursday afternoon will have in store. Viewers do not appear to be complaining, though.
“Apparently, some people think the way I work out is strange,” Meloni deadpans during a set of naked bicep curls to open the ad. “Honestly, I don’t get it. Me, I don’t think using the Peloton app is strange at all.” Cue a montage of the actor doing naked yoga (which, OK, actually is a thing), naked strength training, naked meditation, and even naked running. (That last one? No thanks. The bouncing, folks. The chafing.) Meloni finishes the ad off with some naked stretches and an innocent question: “Now, does that seem strange to you?”
The inside-joke part of it is that Meloni actually does work out naked — at least when he’s in his home gym, as he told People in May. “I work out naked. It’s my gym,” he said, adding that he “can do whatever I want” there. And for the record, he does not black out the window when he does so. “And I’m okay with that. My wife is not.”
For what it’s worth, Meloni really is majorly into fitness, as you could probably tell from, you know, his muscular naked body. The actor and dad of two, 61, focuses on strength training and goes through “bodybuilding phases” with his trainer, he told Interview in 2021. According to Men’s Health, he apparently considers a “light workout” to be 80 minutes of moves like box jumps and pull-ups.
One celeb who’s apparently not a fan of Meloni’s workout wardrobe, or lack thereof: Ryan Reynolds. “This is a crime scene. Not an ad,” he tweeted about the commercial, with his usual facetious sense of humor. (Further down in the thread, a commenter wondered what it was like for the editor blurring out the, um, rear shot at timestamp 1:34. “I’ll be okay. Thanks for checking in,” Reynolds replied.) But as one YouTube commenter responded, “The only crime here is that they blurred the best parts.” We’ll leave it at that.