Rob Reiner was 20 minutes into a video podcast promoting his new film — a semi-autobiographical tale of a famous dad and his drug-addicted son — when the interviewer asked what his son Nick, who co-wrote the movie, learned from it.
Reiner pointed just off-screen. Nick, then 22, had been there the whole time.
“He’s right here. You can ask him,” Reiner said in the 2016 interview with comedian Paul Mecurio about the film, “Being Charlie.”
“Oh, that’s your son!” a surprised Mecurio said, inviting the lean young man with thick black glasses to join the discussion about “Being Charlie,” which is based on Nick’s experiences bouncing in and out of drug rehab as a teenager.
At times 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 dad and his grandfather, the acclaimed director and comedian Carl Reiner.
“I had no identity, and I had no passions,” Nick said. “And I think the reason I had no identity was because I have a famous dad and a famous grandpa, and that fame sort of informs who you are. So, I wanted to edge out my own identity with a more rebellious, angry, drug-addicted sort of persona.”
On Sunday night, Los Angeles police officers arrested Nick Reiner, 32, on suspicion of murdering his 78-year-old father and his mother, Michele Singer Reiner, a 70-year-old photographer and producer. The couple werer found dead at their Brentwood home Sunday afternoon.
Family friends told The Times that Nick had been living in a guesthouse 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 Saturday evening at a party at Conan O’Brien’s home and that people there noticed Nick acting strangely. The family friends, who asked not to be identified, said the Reiners’ daughter, Romy, found her parents Sunday afternoon at their home on Chadbourne Avenue.
Law enforcement sources told The Times that there was no sign of forced entry and that the Reiners had injuries consistent with being stabbed. Nick Reiner was being held without bail at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s inmate 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 beloved romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” which he directed.
When Rob Reiner was interviewed over lunch in 1998 by a Times columnist, Nick, then 5, tumbled around the table, prompting his father to quip: “He’s floppy. He’s always moving around. He was born like that. When he came out, the doctor said, ‘This is a squirmy one.’ ”
Soon, the columnist noted, “Nick’s photographer mom, Michele … arrived to scoop him up.”
In interviews, Nick has said that he and his dad — who was quieter at home than he was in his public role — did not bond much when he was younger.
In the 2016 interview with Mecurio, Nick said that he was listless and that “I had nothing to fill my time. I had nothing to look forward to.”
As a teenager, Nick struggled with heroin addiction, cycling in and out of rehabilitation centers and experiencing bouts of homelessness.
He had gotten clean by 2015, when he co-wrote “Being Charlie,” about a drug-addicted young man whose father is a cold, former movie star 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 sat quietly as his father spoke — said many aspects of the movie were inspired by their relationship, including a line that the father character tells his son: “I’d rather you hate me and you be alive.”
After putting himself out there with the film, he said in the interview with Mercurio, it was hard to see the public bash him as “a spoiled white rich kid.”
At that point, Rob interjected, saying: “Listen, I had to talk to him about this. Listen, I know what it’s like to be ‘the son of,’ and to have people assume certain things about you, and it’s very, very difficult.”
In public, Nick praised his parents for helping him find sobriety. But he also said he felt guilty disappointing them and was trying to figure out his own path.
Rob said that making the movie with his son was therapeutic, allowing them to work through past trauma and develop a closer relationship.
During a 2015 interview with The Times at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Rob said he regretted valuing the advice of counselors over the voice of his son as he and his wife tried to keep Nick in rehab.
“When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” he said. “We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”
Michele added: “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”
After the couple’s deaths, one family friend said Rob and Michele “did everything for Nick. Every treatment program, therapy sessions and put aside their lives to save Nick’s repeatedly.” The friend said that they had “never known a family so dedicated to a child” and that “to have it end this way is awful.”
In the pivotal 1970s sitcom “All in the Family,” Rob Reiner, in the role of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, played a liberal young man who often butted heads with his staunchly conservative, bigoted father-in-law, Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor.
One 1977 episode, “Archie’s Bitter Pill,” touches on addiction, with Archie getting hooked on pills as he copes with depression triggered by his new bar not getting much business.
When Archie starts acting irritable and erratic, stuffing pancakes into his pocket before storming off to work one morning, Michael solemnly declares: “That man is on something.”
Little is publicly known about Nick’s life in the decade since “Being Charlie” premiered. According to IMDb, he has not been listed in other movie credits.
Nick appeared with his family in September at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood for the premiere of “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” which his dad directed.
In August 2018, Nick did a return interview on “Dopey,” a podcast about addiction and recovery, in which he described wrecking his parents’ guesthouse.
“I got totally spun out on uppers — I think it was coke and something else — and I was up for days on end, and I started punching out different things in my guesthouse,” including a TV, he said.
The incident, he said, happened around the time his parents told him he had to get out and go to rehab.
Nick said in that interview that he was then “smoking a little weed, taking a little Adderall.” He said that he was smoking pot “as a preventative measure” to stop himself from doing harder drugs and that he was not being especially productive.
But he said that, about a year earlier, he “got back on dope and other things” and “wound up having a cocaine heart attack” on an airplane.
The host told him: “I also want you to take a shot at recovery again sometime, then you can call in and say how good your life is.”
Times staff writers Suhauna Hussain, Alexandra Del Rosario and Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
The post A famous father, a troubled son: How addiction tormented the Reiner family appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
