The sudden deaths Sunday of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, reverberated through Hollywood. Now, the arrest of Reiner’s son Nick on Monday on a murder charge in connection with his parents’ deaths is shedding new light on the internal struggles of the famous family.
Business Insider spoke with Nick Reiner and Rob Reiner in 2016 while attending the Toronto International Film Festival, where the pair were premiering their movie “Being Charlie,” which is based on Nick’s experiences with drug abuse.
The movie focuses on 18-year-old Charlie (Nick Robinson) as he struggles with addiction to heroin and cocaine. As Charlie jumps in and out of rehab, the aggravation of his actor-turned-politician father (“Princess Bride” star Cary Elwes) grows, as he struggles to figure out how to help his son.
Nick began working on the script with a fellow addict, Matt Elisofon, while spending four years at a Los Angeles rehab facility. After the script was rejected as a TV series, Nick and Elisofon turned to Rob to come on and direct it as a feature film.
Nick told Business Insider at the time that working with his father on a film about his struggles with addiction and their relationship as a family was complicated but healing.
“It was a real corrective emotional experience,” Nick told Business Insider in 2016 of watching his movie premiere at TIFF.
“I relied on him,” Rob said of his son. “He’s the heart and soul of the film.”
The movie had a blink-and-you-miss-it release, playing in four theaters for one week in May 2016.
“We were healing as we were going along,” Nick said in 2016. “And it all doesn’t happen overnight. Certain things we hadn’t dealt with for a while, but we were able to through this movie. It didn’t fix everything, but it really tapped into — “
Nick paused to find the words, then his father, sitting across from Nick, finished for him.
“It forced me to really have to understand what he had been going through for a long time,” Rob said.
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