What Rob and Michele Reiner said about how much they loved their son Nick

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — For a time in the 1990s, Rob Reiner turned his attention from the movies that had made him famous towards a particular passion project.

Attachment theory was the growing rage — the idea that a child needs to form secure bonds with a caregiver in the first three years of life in order to develop in a healthy and stable way. Reiner founded “I Am Your Child,” an advocacy group designed to raise awareness.

It was in that capacity that he made his way to the studios of Charlie Rose in June 1997.

“I’ve been thinking about this for almost 20 years,” he told Rose. Now that he had found success, using his platform to work on the subject “is the greatest thrill of my life,” he said. “I hate to say it but, if I could make a living, you know, doing this, I wouldn’t make films.”

It was a big statement, but one grounded in Reiner’s beliefs. “Successful attachment early on holds you in very good stead later on in life,” he told Rose. “You will not find one single person in jail for a violent crime who had a great childhood.”

At the time, Nick Reiner was three years old. Twenty-eight years later he would stand accused of murdering his parents.

The Reiners spoke openly and often about their love for their children, who in addition to Nick include son Jake Reiner, 34, daughter Romy, 27 and Tracy, 61, who Rob Reiner adopted during a previous marriage to the celebrated director Penny Marshall.

Michele Reiner’s Instagram features glowing photos and proud boasts about her kids, while Rob Reiner was a common presence in Romy Reiner’s social media in particular, where she appeared to revel in the time they spent together, swimming in the sea or regularly cutting his hair.

Reiner was reportedly so enamored with fatherhood that he had the word “dad” as part of his email address.

The Reiners had differing parenting styles and spoke about the tension it caused in their relationship when the kids were little.

“We had different ways of going about it,” Rob Reiner said during an appearance with Michele on the “Double Date with Marlo Thomas & Phil Donahue” podcast in October 2022. Asked about the biggest challenges in their marriage, Rob Reiner said it was “different issues with the kids.”

Michele Reiner jumped in with an example. “When the boys were little — like 4 and 6, before our daughter was born— I said we really need to teach them how to make a bed and our oldest son Jake goes, ‘But daddy, you don’t make your bed,’” she recalled. “And Rob went ‘He’s right.’… Even the kids complain that there aren’t enough boundaries and they weren’t disciplined enough.”

Rob Reiner replied that he “got that from my parents. They never disciplined me.” Then he added: “You got your kids, you love your kids and hopefully they do the right thing.”

The Reiners were also very open about Nick’s struggles with substance abuse, which included revolving stays in rehab and periods of homelessness. Rob and Nick Reiner channeled the difficult story into the film “Being Charlie,” which Rob Reiner directed and the younger Reiner co-wrote.

“I really wasn’t sure I wanted to do this,” Nick Reiner told the Los Angeles Times during a family dinner to celebrate his 22nd birthday after the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 .

It was a sentiment his father understood.

“It was very, very hard going through it the first time, with these painful and difficult highs and lows,” the elder Reiner said at the time. “And then making the movie dredged it all up again.”

It also prompted the Reiners to reflect on the path they chose as they tried to help Nick deal with addiction, giving more trust to professionals than to their troubled son.

“The program works for some people but it can’t work for everybody. When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him we wouldn’t listen,” Rob Reiner 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.”

“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.”

The film depicts the horrors of addiction for those who suffer from it and those around them. It stars Cary Elwes as a former actor running for Congress whose son (played by Nick Robinson) struggles with rehab and sobriety.

Elwes, who also starred in Reiner’s “The Princess Bride,” talked to the LA Times when the film was being promoted about his admiration for the director, saying “Sharing your life story about a child with a drug addiction? And in this business?

“So many filmmakers say, ‘It’s a personal story’ and they don’t really mean it,” Elwes said. “It doesn’t get more personal than this.”

The actor also said Reiner didn’t shy from the hard parts of Elwes playing a stand-in for him.

“There were times when I would want to tone it down and Rob would just tell me, ‘No, turn it up.’ He would tell me he didn’t handle it well and we had to show that,” Elwes said. “He would describe the stages of grief and how addiction is like a slow suicide, then say, ‘Let’s explore all of that.’”

Promoting the film, Rob and Nick Reiner were often vulnerable about both their relationship and the process of filmmaking.

“I think the bonding came not from the story itself, but from the fact that we were working on a movie together,” Nick Reiner said during an episode of AOL’s speaker series “Build.” “I could see him in…I think the form in which he could express himself best which is making movies.”

It probably wouldn’t have happened were it not for Michele Reiner.

At that 22nd birthday dinner, Rob Reiner credited his wife for making sure everybody was “so open” as they worked on the film, the original reporter wrote in a story after the Reiners were found dead. Michele replied: “But we didn’t set out to do a public good. We had to do it for each other.”

Once, Rob Reiner was asked by “Access Hollywood” if he worried that his son’s troubles would “shine poorly” on his own sterling career.

“No, no, that never crossed my mind,” Rob Reiner said. “I mean, you know, he’s my son, I love him, it doesn’t matter. He’s more important than anything that could happen to me.”

Nick Reiner is currently being held without bail.

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