Nick Reiner, 32, was asked to leave Conan O’Brien’s holiday party hours before his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, were found dead in their home.
The couple’s youngest son attended the comedian’s party on Saturday, Dec. 13, with Rob, 78, and Michele, 68. He was brought to the party so that his parents could “keep an eye on him,” sources told Rolling Stone. While there, however, Nick interrupted comedian Bill Hader with a series of unsettling questions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Nick allegedly asked Hader and several other guests the same set of questions: What’s your name? What’s your last name? Are you famous?
Rob and his son got into a heated argument during the party, with one guest alleging that Rob told his son that his behavior was inappropriate. Another guest told The New York Times that Nick seemed anxious and uncomfortable throughout the night, “in a way that deeply unsettled them.”
A guest similarly revealed to People, “Nick was freaking everyone out, acting crazy, kept asking people if they were famous.”
Nick was eventually asked to leave, and the bodies of Rob and Michele were found less than 24 hours after the A-list party.
Their son is now facing two charges of first-degree murder. The charges include a “special allegation” that Reiner used a dangerous weapon, “that being a knife,” as explained by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Tuesday.
Friends of the Reiner family have recounted Nick’s decades-long battle with substance abuse. Since he was a teen, Nick has struggled with drug addiction, bouncing between homelessness and rehab several times.
“Nick was always troubled, even in his early teens‚” Alan Horn, Rob’s co-founder of production house Castle Rock Entertainment, told WSJ. “Rob and Michele kept all this very private, but they did share with us and others that they struggled with Nick’s addiction issues, tried everything and were really at a loss as to what else to do.”
Nick and Rob collaborated on the 2015 film Being Charlie, which Nick wrote and his father directed. The film detailed Nick’s own experiences with addiction and his stints in rehab. The father-and-son duo gave a candid press tour to promote the movie, with Rob saying it was “cathartic” and “therapeutic” to make the film. Rob told NPR in 2016 that his son was “the heart and soul of the film,” and described Nick as “brilliant and talented.”
In the same interview, Nick was asked if he would work with his father again. “Oh yeah. But I think for now, it’s best for me at least to be sort of independent. But that’s not to say I didn’t have an amazing experience.” Nick reportedly felt “immense pressure” to live up to his father’s legacy.
Speaking with NPR again in September, Rob said Nick was in “a really good place” and that he hadn’t been doing drugs for over six years.
Cinematographer Barry Markowitz, who recently stayed with the Reiners, said Nick seemed to “be on the upswing” when he last saw him. “He looked great. He was sitting and talking with the family,” Markowitz said. “They eat dinner together, old school, and a lot of love, always a lot of love.”
On the other hand, others have said that Rob and Michele were at their “wits’ end” with their son lately.
