Rob Reiner and wife Michele Singer, both of whom were found stabbed to death Sunday at their home in Brentwood, Calif., “tried in every way to help” son Nick, who has been arrested and held without bail in their grisly deaths.
An insider told People that the late couple “could never reach stability” with the 32-year-old, who has battled substance abuse since at least age 14.
“They tried everything — giving him space, keeping him close — but his struggles are so deep. It’s just a parent’s worst nightmare,” said another source.
The murders come nearly a decade after Nick told the outlet he “used to harbor a lot of ill will toward” his parents — who sent him to a treatment center upon learning of his drug use — though it had “diminished to almost zero.”
“If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” Nick said in 2016, while promoting “Being Charlie,” a film about a politician’s son’s reluctant recovery from drug abuse, which he co-wrote and his father directed.
He said he’d been homeless “in Maine. … in New Jersey. … in Texas” and “could’ve died. … You roll the dice and you hope you make it.”
“I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun,” he shared. “That made me who I am now, having to deal with that stuff. … Now, 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. But there was a lot of dark years before.”
Also in 2016, Nick told Paul Mecurio’s podcast that he’d “had no identity, and I had no passions” due to living in the shadow of his father and late grandfather Carl Reiner.
“That fame sort of informs who you are,” Nick said at the time. “So, I wanted to edge out my own identity with a more rebellious, angry, drug-addicted sort of persona.”
The “Princess Bride” and “Misery” filmmaker, who was 78, said in 2015 he believed the film “did make me understand him a lot more and I think it made me a better father, hopefully it did.”
Nick was using again by 2017, and later admitted to having “started punching out different things in my [parents’] guest house.”
TMZ reported Monday that Reiner and Singer, who also shared son Jake, 34, and 28-year-old daughter Romy, spent Saturday night at Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party, where the director and Nick got into a “very loud argument.”
Reiner and his wife, 68, then left, though it’s unclear whether their son, who’d been living in their guesthouse, followed suit.
Reiner family sources told TMZ and the Los Angeles Times that the couple had been increasingly worried about their son’s mental health. Reiner, Singer and their three kids were photographed together at the Sept. 9 premiere of “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”
