Nick Reiner, the son of Hollywood movie director Rob Reiner, has been arrested after the filmmaker and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were found stabbed to death at their Los Angeles home.
The grim discovery was made on Sunday afternoon by the director’s daughter Romy Reiner, according to People magazine. Initial reports said that a family member was being questioned by authorities after the couple were found.
It has now emerged that Nick Reiner was taken into custody on Sunday evening and is being held on a $4 million bond, though his record does not state what charges he might face.
Born on September 14, 1993, Nick Reiner is the couple’s middle child and has a well-publicized history of drug addiction, which began when he was a teenager and saw him undertake multiple stints in rehab, beginning at age 15. At several points, he found himself sleeping rough in a number of states.
“I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,” he has said. “I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
After attaining sobriety, he told People in 2016: “I’ve been home for a really long time, and I’ve sort of gotten acclimated back to being in L.A. and being around my family.”
He subsequently channeled his experiences into an autobiographical screenplay, co-written with his friend Matt Elisofon, which became the 2015 film Being Charlie, directed by his father.
The film starred Nick Robinson as Charlie Mills, an 18-year-old addict, and Princess Bride star Cary Elwes as his dad David, a Hollywood actor now running for Congress.
Being Charlie is about the tensions between Mills and his parents, who are desperate for him to get clean and insist he checks into rehab, despite the younger man’s insistence that he does not find the treatment helpful or conducive to recovery. The film attempts to address both perspectives in the interest of helping other families facing comparable struggles.
Rob Reiner said to The Los Angeles Times upon the film’s release: “When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen. 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.”
“We were so influenced by these people,” Michele Reiner added. “They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”
In the same interview, Nick himself said: “I got sick of it. I got sick of doing that s***. 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.”
At a Q&A event promoting the film, Rob Reiner said: “We didn’t set out for it to be cathartic or for it to be therapeutic, but it turned out to be that.”
He admitted that “there were disagreements” during the shoot and that “at times it was really rough,” with Nick agreeing that the process was sometimes “overwhelming for me.”
Towards the end of Being Charlie, Elwes’s character delivers an apology that appears to chime with much of what Rob Reiner has said about his real relationship with Nick.
“Charlie, I know you’re angry at me and probably don’t want to hear this right now but I do love you,” David tells his son in the film.
“I’m sorry. Every expert with a desk and a diploma told me I had to be tough on you but every time we sent you away to another one of those programs I saw you slipping away from us.
“And all I could tell myself is that I’d rather have you alive and hating me than dead on the streets. So what do you want me to do? Tell me what to do.”
