Nick Reiner, son of Rob Reiner, attends the Los Angeles Premiere of ”Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles in September. Reuters
The murders of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer have left Hollywood shaken.
Even more so when news emerged that their son Nick was arrested in connection with the incident. Nick, 32, has a history of drug abuse and homelessness.
There are reports that Rob and Nick had an argument at a holiday party earlier this week. But what do we know about Nick? What about his alleged involvement in the murder?
Let’s take a closer look.
His parents, Rob and Michele, married in 1989. Rob was previously married to actor-director Penny Marshall. Nick has two siblings – Jake Reiner and Romy Reiner – as well as a stepsister, Tracy Marshall, from Rob’s first marriage.
Nick has been struggling with drug addiction since he was a teenager. He entered his first drug rehabilitation programme at the age of 15. Nick, in interviews, has said that he didn’t go to school or college growing up. He linked this to his bouts of instability.
Nick has spoken about how he has been in treatment several times. During his teens and 20s, Nick also experienced periods of homelessness as a result of his drug habit. Nick told People magazine in an interview, “I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas. I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
Nick, in 2015, collaborated with his father on co-writing a film called Being Charlie. The semi-autobiographical film, about a successful actor and his drug-addicted son, dealt with addiction and recovery. While Nick co-wrote the film, Rob directed it. The movie centred around the conflict between the father, who has political aspirations, and his son.
A scene from the movie in which the father apologised and said, “I’d rather you hate me and you be alive,” was cribbed nearly word for word from real life, the Reiners said.
“It was very, very hard going through it the first time, with these painful and difficult highs and lows,” Rob said. “And then making the movie dredged it all up again.”
Nick, at the Toronto Film Festival in 2015, explained why he decided to give up drugs.
“I got sick of doing that,” he told the LA Times. “I come from a nice family. I’m not supposed to be out there on the streets and in homeless shelters doing all these … things.”
Rob, at the time, said he regretted listening to counsellors when dealing with Nick’s addiction.
“When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” Rob said. “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.”
Michele added, “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”
“If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programmes they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” Nick told People. “When I was out there, I could’ve died,” he said. “It’s all luck. You roll the dice and you hope you make it.”
Appearing with his father on the AOL programme Build, Nick said he experienced a lot of dark years. However, he added that he learned to use comedy in a positive way during his trials and used it for his art.
Rehab is “tragic and all, but the people that are there are not going to want you to throw them a pity party. They’re going to want you to laugh at the situation and make light of it,” Nick said.
Rob called Being Charlie “the most personal thing I’ve ever done”.
“You don’t set out to have a cathartic experience or be therapeutic in some way,” he said. “The fact that we were dealing with things that Nick had gone through, and how I had related to it and how his mother had related to it … it forced me to have to see more clearly and understand more deeply what Nick had gone through, and I think it forced him to see things that I had experienced during this process.”
There are reports that Rob and Nick got into an argument at comedian Conan O’Brien’s house during a holiday party the night before the incident. Eyewitnesses have claimed that Nick, who was living in a guest house on his parents’ property, was acting strangely. Michele is said to have grown increasingly concerned about his deteriorating mental health in recent weeks. It remains unclear if the two incidents are related.
Nick, in September, was snapped standing with his family at the Los Angeles premiere of Reiner’s comedy musical Spinal Tap II. Nick didn’t crack a smile – instead, he stood there with a blank expression.
According to reports, the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) on Sunday received a phone call around 3.30 pm requesting medical assistance at a home in Los Angeles’ elite Brentwood area. Personnel found the bodies of a 78-year-old and a 68-year-old at the scene – who were later confirmed to be Rob and Michele. Nick’s sister Romy is said to have discovered the bodies of her parents at the scene. The bodies are said to have had multiple stab wounds.
Nick was nowhere to be found. He was tracked down by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Gang and Narcotics Division, as well as the US Marshals task force, and apprehended by the police in South Los Angeles. Nick has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his parents and is being held without bail in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles police have now said that Nick has been booked for murder and that the investigation has revealed that Nick “was responsible for their deaths”. Authorities are yet to provide a motive for the murders.
The news, which stunned Hollywood, also turned into a political row after US President Donald Trump waded in, claiming that ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ may somehow have been responsible for the murder.
His comments have triggered backlash from many, with California Governor Gavin Newsom, a presidential hopeful in 2028, calling him a ‘sick man’. Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican and frequent Trump critic, called the comments “inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered.”
