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 shocked Mecurio stated, inviting the lean younger man with thick black glasses to hitch the dialogue about “Being Charlie,” which is predicated on Nick’s experiences bouncing out and in of drug rehab as an adolescent.
At instances 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 feel the explanation 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 needed to edge out my very own identification with a extra rebellious, offended, drug-addicted form of persona.”
On Sunday night time, Los Angeles law enforcement officials 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 lifeless at their Brentwood residence Sunday afternoon.
Household buddies advised The Instances 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.
Pals additionally stated that Rob Reiner and his son obtained into an argument Saturday night at a celebration at Conan O’Brien’s residence and that folks there seen Nick appearing surprisingly. The household buddies, who requested to not be recognized, stated the Reiners’ daughter, Romy, discovered her mother and father Sunday afternoon at their residence on Chadbourne Avenue.
Legislation enforcement sources advised The Instances that there was no signal of compelled entry and that the Reiners had accidents per being stabbed. Nick Reiner was being held with out bail on the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, in keeping with Los Angeles County sheriff’s inmate information.
Nick Reiner, born in 1993, is the second of three kids 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 Instances columnist, Nick, then 5, tumbled across the desk, prompting his father to quip: “He’s floppy. He’s all the time transferring 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 residence than he was in his public position — 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 sit up for.”
As an adolescent, Nick struggled with heroin dependancy, 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 typically sat quietly as his father spoke — stated many points of the film had 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 discuss to him about this. Pay attention, I do know what it’s prefer to be ‘the son of,’ and to have folks assume sure issues about you, and it’s very, very tough.”
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 making an attempt to determine his personal path.
Rob stated that making the film along with his son was therapeutic, permitting them to work via previous trauma and develop a better relationship.
Throughout a 2015 interview with The Instances 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 pay attention,” he stated. “We had been determined, and since the folks had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them once we ought to have been listening to our son.”
Michele added: “We had been so influenced by these folks. They’d inform us he’s a liar, that he was making an attempt to govern us. And we believed them.”
After the couple’s deaths, one household good friend stated Rob and Michele “did all the pieces for Nick. Each remedy program, remedy periods and put apart their lives to save lots of Nick’s repeatedly.” The good friend stated that that they had “by no means recognized a household so devoted to a toddler” and that “to have it finish this fashion is terrible.”
Within the pivotal Nineteen Seventies sitcom “All within the Household,” Rob Reiner, within the position of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, performed a liberal younger man who typically butted heads along with his staunchly conservative, bigoted father-in-law, Archie Bunker, performed by Carroll O’Connor.
One 1977 episode, “Archie’s Bitter Tablet,” touches on dependancy, with Archie getting hooked on drugs as he copes with despair triggered by his new bar not getting a lot enterprise.
When Archie begins appearing 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 recognized about Nick’s life within the decade since “Being Charlie” premiered. In line with IMDb, he has not been listed in different film credit.
Nick appeared along 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 dependancy and restoration, through which he described wrecking his mother and father’ guesthouse.
“I obtained completely spun out on uppers — I feel 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 advised him he needed to get out and go to rehab.
Nick stated in that interview that he was then “smoking a bit of weed, taking a bit of Adderall.” He stated that he was smoking pot “as a preventative measure” to cease himself from doing tougher medication and that he was not being particularly productive.
However he stated that, a few 12 months earlier, he “obtained again on dope and different issues” and “wound up having a cocaine coronary heart assault” on an airplane.
The host advised 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.”
Instances employees writers Suhauna Hussain, Alexandra Del Rosario and Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
