NEW YORK (AP) — Before Sunday's shocking double murders, few families seemed further away from the dark side of life than the Reiners.
For decades, Rob Reiner and his father Carl have represented a gentle and hopeful spirit in American culture, whether it be the sweet antics of Dick Van Dyke in the series named after him and created by Carl, or the overtly sentimental ending of Rob's When Harry Met Sally…, which is now considered the kind of romantic comedy they don't seem to make anymore. Carl Reiner called his son his favorite director, and Rob recalled that he admired his father so much that he wanted to change his name to Carl.
This dynasty was apparently spared jealousy, cynicism and rage, as well as ambulances, police tape and 911 calls. Carl Reiner was married to his wife Estelle for over 60 years; Rob with his wife Michelle since 1989. Few would have imagined that the word “registered for murder” would appear in a sentence about any of them. But on Monday, Los Angeles police announced that Nick Reiner, 32, was in custody on suspicion of killing his parents Rob and Michelle.
“They were among my closest friends,” Maria Shriver wrote on Threads. “We laughed together, we cried together, we played together, we dreamed together. We had dinner last week and they were in the best place of their lives.”
Actor-producer Rita Wilson wrote in an Instagram post that it was “impossible to reconcile the tragedy of their deaths with the beauty they offered the world.”
The Reiners never pretended to like everyone. Carl Reiner, who died in 2020, appeared in an anti-Donald Trump ad two years earlier, urging like-minded citizens to vote in the midterm elections. Rob Reiner was a liberal who for years denounced Trump as a threat to democracy, and on Monday the president called him a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
But the Reiners' politics, even in their most aggressive moments, were rooted in conviction and civic engagement, a belief that the right words could bring justice and redemption. In A Few Good Men, Rob's adaptation of Aaron Sorkin's play, an inexperienced Navy lawyer outsmarts an aggressive commander and forces him to confess to complicity in the death of a young enlisted man. The American President, a Reiner-Sorkin collaboration released in 1995 during President Bill Clinton's first term, was a feel-good liberal tale about a wavering CEO who rediscovers his principles and finds love with an environmental lobbyist.
“Behind all the stories he (Rob Reiner) wrote was a deep belief in the goodness of people—and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into practice,” former President Barack Obama wrote on X.
As liberal Mike Stivic in All in the Family, Reiner constantly argued with his bigoted father-in-law Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O'Connor) but never gave up on reconciling with him. After one particularly heated conversation, Stivik's mother-in-law, Edith (Jean Stapleton), explains to him that Archie's anger stems from resentment that Mike is young and has his life ahead of him.
When he sees Archie again, Mike hugs him: “I understand,” he says.
Even Nick Reiner's admitted problems seemed to be resolved. He was out of institutional care and homeless at times during his teenage years. But by 2015, they were working together on Being Charlie, a semi-autobiographical film about a young drug addict and his relationship with his famous father. Both would say the project brought them closer together. Nick Reiner then told People magazine that cinema turned out to be a mutual passion. Rob Reiner told The Associated Press that he has realized his mistakes as a parent.
“We didn't think it would be therapeutic or bring us closer, but it did,” Rob Reiner told the AP. “It made us understand ourselves better than before. I told Nick while we were doing it, I said, 'You know, it doesn't matter, whatever happens to this thing, we've already won.' It was already good.”
