Rob Reiner and his wife Michele received a heartbroken tribute from their friend Rita Wilson, who said the couple ‘loved their kids’ and ‘did everything right.’
Reiner, 78, and Michele, 70, were found stabbed to death Sunday at their $13.5 million Brentwood estate, where their son Nick, 32, lived in the guesthouse. Nick was arrested that night and has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
Reports claim the bodies were discovered by the Reiners’ daughter Romy, 27, who allegedly told police about a ‘dangerous’ family member who ‘should be a suspect.’
Nick had a long history of drug and mental health issues, having gone to rehab for the first time at the age of 15 and plunged into multiple spells of homelessness before his latest stay in his parents’ guesthouse, which he has confessed to having ‘wrecked’ once while ‘totally spun out on uppers’ that kept him ‘up for days on end.’
Now their longtime friend Wilson has offered a devastated account of her bond with the slaughtered couple, in an essay published by Variety.
‘They made the world a better place. They loved their kids. Each one. They did everything right. They loved. They were loved,’ wrote Wilson, the wife of Tom Hanks.
Rita Wilson is pictured with Rob Reiner, Michelle Pfeiffer and Bruce Willis at the New York premiere of their 1999 comedy The Story of Us, which Reiner directed
Wilson has now penned a shattered tribute to Reiner and Michele (pictured 2013) after the couple were found stabbed to death Sunday
The Reiners were parents to Nick as well as Romy, who lived across the street from them, and another son called Jake, 34. Rob Reiner also had an older daughter called Tracy, 61, whom he adopted with his first wife Penny Marshall.
He directed Wilson in the comedies North and The Story of Us, and they were castmates in a further two movies, Sleepless in Seattle and Mixed Nuts.
In her essay eulogizing her late friends, a shattered Wilson wrote: ‘It’s hard to reconcile the goodness they offered to the world with this ending. It doesn’t make sense. But how they lived makes all the sense in the world.’
She expressed her grief at never again being able to experience the pleasure of ‘running into Rob and Michele in the neighborhood and having a great laugh, or having dinner where Michele insists on having only one conversation.’
Wilson hailed Michele as a ‘talented photographer’ who found ‘beauty every day,’ as well as Reiner for having ‘made history in multiple ways through his work.’
She showered further praise on the couple’s activism, writing: ‘Both of them made a difference in their civic contributions and actions.’
Wilson and Hanks’ son Chet, 35, has been frank about previously struggling with his own substance abuse issues, which he conquered with the support of his parents.
He remarked last year that prior to his sobriety, he ‘would go do coke with the cokeheads, and they would be telling me like: “Yo, chill, bro…. Wait a second. Give it like 15 minutes,”‘ on the Raw Talk podcast.
The Reiners, who married in 1989, had three children together – (from left) Jake, 34, Nick, 32, and Romy, 27; they are all pictured in 2014 at Avery Fisher Hall in New York
Reiner and Nick are pictured in 2016 at the BUILD Series promoting their film Being Charlie, which was inspired by Nick’s rollercoaster battle with addiction
In late 2023, Chet announced two years of sobriety on The Adam Friedland Show, and this March he confirmed he had successfully remained on the wagon.
Chet praised his family for having ‘stuck with me through thick and thin,’ in an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show this year.
‘And I don’t take it for granted. I’m really, really grateful for both my parents, and I’m at the age where I’m just really grateful for them,’ he told Barrymore, who herself is now sober after past dependencies on drugs and alcohol.
‘But what I’ve learned along the way is that family – whether it’s blood or found – do make you feel shy and embarrassed when you’re not doing the right things and the most proud when you are,’ Chet observed.
A source close to Rob Reiner informed the Daily Mail this Monday that Nick ‘had been living in their guesthouse, the same one he destroyed more than once, but it had been like a revolving door all his adult life.’
The source alleged further: ‘He would do meth and not sleep for days and then have outbursts, breaking things, punching walls. He was a ticking time bomb. His drug use was getting worse and his parents wanted him out.’
Nick, the friend claimed, ‘used to brag how he could get away with anything and took money from his parents for drugs and prostitutes.’
The insider added: ‘He would talk about this stuff in meetings, but then stopped going because he said it was too cultish. He laughed about destroying his parents’ guesthouse more than once. He was so nonchalant about it.
The bodies were discovered by the Reiners’ daughter Romy, 27, who reportedly informed the police about a ‘dangerous’ family member who ‘should be a suspect’; Romy posing with Nick
This past Saturday, the night before Rob and Michele Reiner were killed, Nick was seen having what sources described as a ‘very loud argument’ with his parents at Conan O’Brien’s star-studded Christmas party, according to TMZ.
Michele, by that point, was alleged to have spent months telling friends about trying to cope with Nick’s drug and mental problems, saying: ‘We’ve tried everything.’
Nick’s substance abuse began at an early age, resulting in his first rehab stint at the age of 15 and a staggering 17 stays in treatment facilities by the time he was 22.
Reiner exposed his family’s turmoil by directing a 2015 film called Being Charlie, which was inspired by Nick’s rollercoaster battle with addiction.
Nick co-wrote the script, in which Charlie bristles against his parents’ approach to his drug abuse, such as enforced stints in rehab.
Near the end of the movie, Charlie’s father apologizes for taking such a hard line with him, a conversation Reiner described as an echo of reality.
While promoting the film the year of its release, Reiner expressed regret at having relied so heavily on the advice of medical professionals in seeking help for Nick.
‘When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,’ he told the Los Angeles Times. ‘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.’
Wilson and Hanks’ son Chet, 35, has been frank about previously struggling with his own substance abuse issues, which he conquered with the support of his parents; pictured 2014
Michele said: ‘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.’
The following year, Nick recounted his own past experiences with addiction, saying that he had repeatedly become homeless in previous years because he refused to submit to the treatments he had been urged to undergo.
‘If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,’ he shared in an interview with People.
‘I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas. I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.’
He eventually gave up drugs when he ‘got sick of doing that s***,’ he explained. ‘I come from a nice family. I’m not supposed to be out there on the streets and in homeless shelters doing all these f***ed-up things.’
Two years later, he gave an interview in which he discussed having once destroyed his parents’ guesthouse while under the influence.
‘I got totally spun out on uppers,’ he said on an episode of the Dopey podcast. ‘I think it was coke and something else. I was up for days on end.’
He recalled ‘punching out different things in my guest house. I started with the TV and then went over to the lamp. Everything in the guesthouse got wrecked.’
Back in 2016, promoting Being Charlie, Nick had explained that he ‘didn’t bond’ with his father while younger but that working on the film ‘made me feel closer to him.’
He harbored hopes he would be able to retain his sobriety and avoid sinking back into homelessness, inasmuch as when he ‘was out there, I could’ve died. It’s all luck,’ he said on the BUILD Series. ‘You roll the dice and you hope you make it.’
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