Hours before legendary filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home, they attended a holiday party at Conan O’Brien’s home.
Now, two months after the tragedy, the comedian broke his silence with the death of his best friends.
“To have that experience of saying good night to someone and they go away and find out the next day that they’re gone … I think I was in shock for a long time after that,” O’Brien said in an interview on the “New Yorker Radio Hour” podcast. “I mean, there’s no other word for it. It’s bad — it’s bad. It’s bad.”
As the host of the Dec party. 13, O’Brien was among the last people to see the Reiners alive. Their 32-year-old son, Nick, was arrested the next night and charged with his parents’ murder. Two sources who attended the party described seeing an intense verbal exchange between Nick Reiner and his parents.
In an interview published Friday, O’Brien said he and his wife were very close to the couple, describing them as “lovely people.”
O’Brien praised Rob Reiner’s talent as a director and his tireless advocacy efforts. The director of “When Harry Met Sally …” was a prominent donor to the Democratic Alliance, noted critic of President Trump and champion of causes such as early childhood education and gay marriage.
“I think about how Rob felt about things going on in the country, how involved he was, how he put himself out there — and how that voice went silent all of a sudden is still hard for me to understand,” O’Brien told The New Yorker.
O’Brien said he considers Reiner “one of the greats” given his impressive record of directing blockbuster movies.
“To do seven —, like, nine years, 10 years, 11 years — is crazy,” O’Brien said. “With ‘Spinal Tap’ alone, if it was the only thing he ever did, he was a huge influence on my generation.”
O’Brien vividly remembers the first time he watched the rock mockumentary “This is Spinal Tap” in college, calling it “an atom-splitting moment.”
The two were not only friends, but also collaborators. Reiner was a guest on a 1999 episode of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” and also appeared on episodes of O’Brien’s podcast, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend,” in 2023 and 2025.
Authorities suspect Nick Reiner stabbed his 78-year-old father and 70-year-old mother to death in their Brentwood home in the early hours of December 14. The couple’s bodies were found in the master bedroom by their daughter 12 hours later, and Nick Reiner was arrested that night in South LA by Los Angeles police.
Nick Reiner was charged with two counts of first degree murder on Dec. 16 and has not yet filed a lawsuit. In January, his trial was postponed to Monday after his lawyer, the legendary attorney Alan Jackson, resigned and was replaced by a public defender.
Nick Reiner has a history of struggling with mental health and substance abuse. It is not clear how much those efforts will be reflected in criminal cases.
Times staff writers James Queally and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
