Christopher Nolan disputes Anne Hathaway's chair ban claim

Christopher Nolan's team has disputed Anne Hathaway's claim that he bans chairs on his movie sets.

The Oscar-winning actress, who played Selina Kyle and her feline alter ego in the director's 2012 movie The Dark Knight Rises, said in a recent interview that Nolan "doesn't allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they're sitting, they're not working."

Her revelation went viral on social media this week, and now a representative for the British filmmaker has dismissed Hathaway's allegations.

"For the record, the only things banned from sets are cell phones (not always successfully) and smoking (very successfully)," his spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak explained to IndieWire. "The chairs Anne was referring to are the director's chairs clustered around the video monitor, allocated on the basis of hierarchy not physical need.
"Chris chooses not to use his but has never banned chairs from the set. Cast and crew can sit wherever and whenever they need and frequently do."

Hathaway made the revelation to her Les Miserables co-star Hugh Jackman for Variety's Actors on Actors interview series earlier this week.

"I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion... I think he's onto something with the chair thing," she also said.

The interview prompted a flurry of support for Nolan on social media, as several film critics and journalists denied that the filmmaker had a ban against chairs.

As well as The Dark Knight Rises, the 37-year-old actress also appeared in the director's sci-fi epic Interstellar in 2014.