Rob Reiner was 20 minutes right into a video podcast selling his new movie — a semi-autobiographical story of a well-known dad and his drug-addicted son — when the interviewer requested what his son Nick, who co-wrote the film, discovered from it.
Reiner pointed simply off-screen. Nick, then 22, had been there the entire time.
“He’s proper right here. You possibly can ask him,” Reiner stated within the 2016 interview with comic Paul Mecurio concerning the movie, “Being Charlie.”
“Oh, that’s your son!” a stunned Mecurio stated, inviting the lean younger man with thick black glasses to affix the dialogue about “Being Charlie,” which relies on Nick’s experiences bouncing out and in of drug rehab as a teen.
At occasions quiet and seemingly uncomfortable, Nick let his father do a lot of the speaking. However when requested why he began utilizing medication within the first place, he blamed the celebrity of his dad and his grandfather, the acclaimed director and comic Carl Reiner.
“I had no identification, and I had no passions,” Nick stated. “And I believe the rationale I had no identification was as a result of I’ve a well-known dad and a well-known grandpa, and that fame form of informs who you might be. So, I wished to edge out my very own identification with a extra rebellious, offended, drug-addicted form of persona.”
On Sunday night time, Los Angeles cops arrested Nick Reiner, 32, on suspicion of murdering his 78-year-old father and his mom, Michele Singer Reiner, a 70-year-old photographer and producer. The couple werer discovered useless at their Brentwood house Sunday afternoon.
Household associates instructed The Occasions that Nick had been dwelling in a guesthouse on his mother and father’ property and that his mom had develop into more and more involved about his psychological well being in latest weeks.
Mates additionally stated that Rob Reiner and his son obtained into an argument Saturday night at a celebration at Conan O’Brien’s house and that individuals there seen Nick performing surprisingly. The household associates, who requested to not be recognized, stated the Reiners’ daughter, Romy, discovered her mother and father Sunday afternoon at their house on Chadbourne Avenue.
Regulation enforcement sources instructed The Occasions that there was no signal of compelled entry and that the Reiners had accidents in line with being stabbed. Nick Reiner was being held with out bail on the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, based on Los Angeles County sheriff’s inmate information.
Nick Reiner, born in 1993, is the second of three youngsters Rob Reiner had with Michele, whom he married in 1989 after assembly her on the set of the beloved romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” which he directed.
When Rob Reiner was interviewed over lunch in 1998 by a Occasions columnist, Nick, then 5, tumbled across the desk, prompting his father to quip: “He’s floppy. He’s at all times shifting round. He was born like that. When he got here out, the physician stated, ‘It is a squirmy one.’ ”
Quickly, the columnist famous, “Nick’s photographer mother, Michele … arrived to scoop him up.”
In interviews, Nick has stated that he and his dad — who was quieter at house than he was in his public function — didn’t bond a lot when he was youthful.
Within the 2016 interview with Mecurio, Nick stated that he was listless and that “I had nothing to fill my time. I had nothing to stay up for.”
As a teen, Nick struggled with heroin habit, biking out and in of rehabilitation facilities and experiencing bouts of homelessness.
He had gotten clear by 2015, when he co-wrote “Being Charlie,” a few drug-addicted younger man whose father is a chilly, former film star operating for governor of California. His father directed the movie, which was co-written with Matt Elisofon.
Throughout the movie’s press tour, Nick — who usually sat quietly as his father spoke — stated many elements of the film have been impressed by their relationship, together with a line that the daddy character tells his son: “I’d relatively you hate me and also you be alive.”
After placing himself on the market with the movie, he stated within the interview with Mercurio, it was exhausting to see the general public bash him as “a spoiled white wealthy child.”
At that time, Rob interjected, saying: “Pay attention, I needed to speak to him about this. Pay attention, I do know what it’s wish to be ‘the son of,’ and to have individuals assume sure issues about you, and it’s very, very troublesome.”
In public, Nick praised his mother and father for serving to him discover sobriety. However he additionally stated he felt responsible disappointing them and was attempting to determine his personal path.
Rob stated that making the film together with his son was therapeutic, permitting them to work by means of previous trauma and develop a more in-depth relationship.
Throughout a 2015 interview with The Occasions on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, the place the movie premiered, Rob stated he regretted valuing the recommendation of counselors over the voice of his son as he and his spouse tried to maintain Nick in rehab.
“When Nick would inform us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t hear,” he stated. “We have been determined, and since the individuals had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them after we ought to have been listening to our son.”
Michele added: “We have been so influenced by these individuals. They might inform us he’s a liar, that he was attempting to control us. And we believed them.”
After the couple’s deaths, one household pal stated Rob and Michele “did every thing for Nick. Each remedy program, remedy classes and put apart their lives to save lots of Nick’s repeatedly.” The pal stated that that they had “by no means identified a household so devoted to a baby” and that “to have it finish this manner is terrible.”
Within the pivotal Seventies sitcom “All within the Household,” Rob Reiner, within the function of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, performed a liberal younger man who usually butted heads together with his staunchly conservative, bigoted father-in-law, Archie Bunker, performed by Carroll O’Connor.
One 1977 episode, “Archie’s Bitter Capsule,” touches on habit, with Archie getting hooked on tablets as he copes with despair triggered by his new bar not getting a lot enterprise.
When Archie begins performing irritable and erratic, stuffing pancakes into his pocket earlier than storming off to work one morning, Michael solemnly declares: “That man is on one thing.”
Little is publicly identified about Nick’s life within the decade since “Being Charlie” premiered. In accordance with IMDb, he has not been listed in different film credit.
Nick appeared together with his household in September on the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood for the premiere of “Spinal Faucet II: The Finish Continues,” which his dad directed.
In August 2018, Nick did a return interview on “Dopey,” a podcast about habit and restoration, by which he described wrecking his mother and father’ guesthouse.
“I obtained completely spun out on uppers — I believe it was coke and one thing else — and I used to be up for days on finish, and I began punching out various things in my guesthouse,” together with a TV, he stated.
The incident, he stated, occurred across the time his mother and father instructed him he needed to get out and go to rehab.
Nick stated in that interview that he was then “smoking slightly weed, taking slightly Adderall.” He stated that he was smoking pot “as a preventative measure” to cease himself from doing more durable medication and that he was not being particularly productive.
However he stated that, a few yr earlier, he “obtained again on dope and different issues” and “wound up having a cocaine coronary heart assault” on an airplane.
The host instructed him: “I additionally need you to take a shot at restoration once more someday, then you may name in and say how good your life is.”
Occasions employees writers Suhauna Hussain, Alexandra Del Rosario and Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
