Rob Reiner desperately tried to help the troubled son now accused of murdering him and his wife.
Nick Reiner, 32, has been charged with murdering his father, the director, 78, and his mother, Michele Singer Reiner, 68, after they were found at their Los Angeles home. Their throats had been slit.
Much attention is now on the relationship between the legendary filmmaker and his son, who has suffered from addiction and mental health issues since he was a teen.
Nick co-wrote the 2015 film Being Charlie about their mutual struggles, and Rob directed the film. Press around the project peeled back the curtain not just on Nick’s troubles, but also on the extremes his parents went to to get him help.
“I was never angry,” Rob told People of Nick’s bouncing between homelessness and rehab. “I felt bad for him, and I didn’t know what to do to help—and a lot of times parents don’t know what to do.”
Nick was just 14 when his parents discovered he had a drug problem. He previously revealed that it was around his 15th birthday, in 2008, that they first placed him in a rehabilitation facility.
That trip to rehab would be the first of many, but the elder Reiner never gave up on his son.
Nick experienced bouts of homelessness in three different states—in Maine, New Jersey, and Texas—as a teenager. He said he pushed back against his dad’s ordering him to rehab all 18 times he was admitted to recovery facilities.
The elder Reiner said he felt he was doing what was best for his son. After years of failure to get clean and stay clean, Rob said he regretted following the advice of counselors over his own instinct and his son’s wishes.
“When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”
He added in an interview with People, “You kind of throw yourself at the mercy of a lot of people who are supposed experts. They’ll all tell you these things, but they don’t take into account your child. And you should know your child better than they do anyway. That is something I learned as we went along.”
Michele felt the same.
“We were so influenced by these people,” she told the LA Times. “They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”
While promoting their joint project, Rob said it was the “most personal” on his long list of films. It was also a chance for him and his son to reconnect after years lost to drug abuse.
Rob described Being Charlie, which was filled with screaming matches but ended with a reconciliation between its main characters, as both “cathartic” and “therapeutic” for him.
The director had gotten “so much closer” with Nick ahead of the project and expressed hope that they might continue working together as his son, then 22, tried to stay clean as a young adult.
“He was the heart and soul of the film, and any time I would get an opportunity to work with him, I would do it, but I do understand him wanting to forge his own way,” Rob told NPR. “I do know what that’s about. I went through it, and he’s brilliant and talented, and he’s going to figure out his path.”
Nick said at one point that collaborating with his dad was an “amazing experience,” but told NPR that he did not want to do it again. The film turned out to be their final project, and the younger Reiner’s struggles continued.
Nick revealed on a 2018 podcast that his drug-induced rampages were so violent, he was once “up for days on end” and destroyed his father’s guest house—punching a TV, a lamp, and more.
“Everything in the guest house got wrecked,” he told the Dopey podcast.
Family sources told TMZ that the Reiners were at their “wits’ end” with Nick by the time they were attacked.
“We’ve tried everything,” Michele reportedly said.
Despite their efforts to save their son, some of those close to the Reiners said they were not shocked to find out that Nick was allegedly behind his parents’ murder.
A longtime neighbor of the Reiners told the New York Post that this “is not the first time their son has been violent.”
“I know of another incident a few years back with Nick, but I won’t say more than that,” the neighbor told the paper. “I just never thought it would ever get to this point.”
The neighbor added, “Nick has had demons for the longest [time]. It is such a nightmare. The whole thing is a tragedy.”
An ex-classmate of Nick’s told the Post she “instantly knew” that he was behind his parents’ slaying when their deaths were announced as a homicide.
Despite those around the family knowing Nick remained a loose cannon, Rob was still doing what he could to help his son.
In September, Nick joined his parents and siblings on the red carpet at the premiere of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. In photos from the event, the then-31-year-old, less than a week from his birthday, stared blankly forward.
Still, the Reiners’ dedication to their youngest son continued into their final night alive.
Sources told Rolling Stone that the Reiners asked Conan O’Brien if they could bring Nick to his Christmas party on Saturday in part so they could “keep an eye on him.”
The magazine’s sources said Nick displayed “antisocial behavior” at the party. A “loud argument” reportedly broke out between the family, and they left shortly after. It was the last time the couple was ever seen alive.
