Rob Reiner was 20 minutes into a video podcast promoting his new film — a semi-autobiographical tale of a famous father and his drug-addicted son — when an interviewer asked what his son Nick, who wrote the film, learned from it.
Reiner pointed off-screen. Nick, who was 22 at the time, had been there the whole time.
“He’s here. You can ask him,” Reiner said in a 2016 interview with comedian Paul Mecurio about the film, “Being Charlie.”
“Oh, that’s your son!” said Mecurio in amazement, inviting the skinny young man with thick black glasses to join in on the conversation about “Being Charlie,” based on Nick’s experience bouncing out of drug addiction as a teenager.
Sometimes quiet and seemingly uncomfortable, Nick let his father do most of the talking. But when asked why he started using drugs in the first place, he blamed the fame of his father and grandfather, acclaimed director and comedian Carl Reiner.
“I didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t have passions,” Nick said. And I think the reason I’m not famous is that I have a famous father and a famous grandfather, and that kind of fame informs who you are. So, I wanted to portray myself as a violent, angry, drug addict.
On Sunday night, Los Angeles police arrested Nick Reiner, 32, on suspicion of murdering his 78-year-old father and his mother, Michele Singer Reiner, 70, a photographer and producer. A couple were found dead in their home in Brentwood on Sunday afternoon.
Family friends told The Times that Nick had been living in a guest house on his parents’ property and that his mother had become increasingly concerned about his mental health in recent weeks.
Friends also said that Rob Reiner and his son got into an argument on Saturday evening at a party at Conan O’Brien’s house and people there saw Nick acting strangely. Family friends, who asked not to be identified, said the Reiners’ daughter, Romy, found her parents on Sunday afternoon at their home on Chadbourne Avenue.
Law enforcement sources told The Times that there were no signs of forced entry and that the Reiners had injuries consistent with a stabbing. Nick Reiner is being held without bail at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s jail records.
Nick Reiner, born in 1993, is the second of three children Rob Reiner had with Michele, whom he married in 1989 after meeting her on the set of the popular romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” which he directed.
When Rob Reiner was interviewed over lunch in 1998 by the Times columnist, Nick, then 5 years old, collapsed on the table, prompting his father to laugh: “He’s pale, he’s always walking around.”
Soon, the columnist noted, “Nick’s photographer’s mother, Michele … came to pick him up.”
In interviews, Nick said that he and his father – who was quieter at home than he was in his public role – did not see each other much when he was young.
In a 2016 interview with Mecurio, Nick said he didn’t have a list and “nothing to waste my time on. I had no expectations.”
As a teenager, Nick struggled with heroin addiction, cycling in and out of rehabs and experiencing periods of homelessness.
He was clean in 2015, when he co-wrote “Being Charlie,” about a drug-addicted young man whose cold, former movie star father is running for governor of California. His father directed the film, which was co-written with Matt Elisofon.
During the film’s press tour, Nick — who often sits quietly as his father speaks — said many aspects of the film were inspired by their relationship, including the line the father character tells his son: “You better hate me and live.”
After putting himself out there for the film, he said in an interview with Mercurio, it was hard to see society vilifying him as a “rich spoiled white kid.”
At that point, Rob intervened, saying: “Listen, I had to talk to him about this. Listen, I know what it’s like to be a ‘son,’ and have people think certain things about you, and it’s very difficult.”
In public, Nick credited his parents for helping him find sobriety. But he also said he felt guilty for letting them down and was trying to find his way.
Rob said making the film with his son was therapeutic, allowing them to work through past traumas and develop a closer relationship.
In an interview with The Times in 2015 at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Rob said he regretted taking counselors’ advice in his son’s voice as he and his wife tried to keep Nick in rehab.
“When Nick told us it wasn’t working for him, we didn’t listen,” he said. “We were desperate, and because people had diplomas on their walls, we listened to them when we should have listened to our son.”
Michele added: “We were influenced a lot by these people, they told us that he was a liar, and he was trying to deceive us.
After the couple’s death, a family friend said that Rob and Michele “did everything for Nick. Every treatment plan, therapy sessions and put their lives on the line to save Nick over and over again.” A friend said “they have never known a family so devoted to a child” and that “it’s too bad that it ended this way.”
In the seminal 1970s sitcom “All in the Family,” Rob Reiner, in the role of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, played a free-spirited young man who often butted heads with his strict father-in-law, Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor.
Another 1977 episode, “Archie’s Bitter Pill,” deals with addiction, with Archie addicted to pills as he deals with the stress of his new bar not getting business.
When Archie starts acting annoying and erratic, putting cookies in his pocket before he gets up for work one morning, Michael says: “That man’s got something.”
Little is known publicly about Nick’s life in the decade since “Being Charlie” first aired. According to IMDb, he is not listed in any of the movie’s credits.
Nick appeared with his family in September at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood for the premiere of “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” directed by his father.
In August 2018, Nick did a comeback interview on “Dopey,” a podcast about addiction and recovery, where he described tearing down his parents’ guest house.
“I went completely out of my mind – I think it was coke and something – and I woke up for days on end, I started hitting different things in my guest house,” he told TV.
This incident, he said, happened when his parents told him that he had to go to rehab.
Nick said in that interview that he then “smoked a little weed, took a little Adderall.” He said he was smoking pot “as a preventative” to stop himself from using hard drugs and was not productive.
But he said that, about a year earlier, he had “taken drugs and other things again” and had a “cocaine heart attack” on the plane.
The owner of the house said to him: “I also want you to try to recover another time, and then call and say how good your life is.”
Times staff writers Suhauna Hussain, Alexandra Del Rosario and Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
