Conan O’Brien is finally opening up about the horrifying deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, who spent their last evening alive at the comedian’s holiday party with their son and alleged murderer, Nick Reiner.
As we previously reported, Rob, Michele, and Nick attended Conan’s annual Christmas party on December 13. Many thought something was off with the 32-year-old screenwriter, who has struggled with mental health and addiction issues, as he mainly kept to himself for most of the night — until he started asking people if they were famous and eventually bumped into Bill Hader.
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According to NBC News, Nick interrupted a conversation between the Saturday Night Live alum and two others. When Bill tried to politely tell Nick to leave since he was having a private chat, witnesses say he stood still and stared at him before “storming off.” And the creepy behavior reportedly continued, with Us Weekly sources claiming he was “going up to people at Conan O’Brien’s party” and “asking people if they were famous.” Two People insiders added:
“Nick was freaking everyone out, acting crazy, kept asking people if they were famous.”
Nick and Rob reportedly got into a “very loud argument” during the party. It is unknown what they bickered about, but it was bad enough that Rob and Michele left the event shortly afterward. And that was the last time anyone saw the couple alive. Their daughter, Romy Reiner, found them stabbed to death in their home the following morning. Nick was then arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
It is an unimaginable situation, especially for the family. Even Conan, who was good friends with Rob and Michele, couldn’t believe it when news broke that they were gone. He told The New Yorker in an interview published on Friday:
“I knew Rob and Michele, and then increasingly got closer and closer to them, and I was seeing them a lot. My wife and I were seeing them a lot, and they were so—they were just such lovely people. And to have that experience of saying good night to somebody and having them leave and then find out the next day that they’re gone. . . . I think I was in shock for quite a while afterward.”
The only word Conan can use to describe what happened is “awful.” He’s not wrong. It is one of the most tragic true crime stories we’ve heard in a while. The Oscar host continued:
“I mean, there’s no other word for it. It’s just very—it’s so awful. It’s just so awful. And I think about how Rob felt about things that are happening in the country, how involved he was, how much he put himself out there—and to have that voice go quiet in an instant is still hard for me to comprehend.”
It’s such a shame. We truly lost two great people too soon.
Conan went on to talk about Rob’s posthumous appearance in Judd Apatow’s documentary Mel Brooks: 99 Year Old Man, in which the The Princess Bride director talked about his late dad Carl Reiner’s friendship with Mel Brooks. Interviewer David Remnick reflected on how Rob seemed “relatively young and so vibrant and alive” in the project before he died, and the former late-night talk show host responded:
“These people are so larger than life, especially if you’ve grown up watching them or appreciating their work. I mean, I just keep mulling over . . . the body of work, I think it’s seven movies that Rob Reiner made, in quick succession, that are classics. Now, if you can make one great movie, that’s impressive. It’s an almost impossible feat. To make two means that you’re one of the greats. To make seven—in, like, a nine-year, ten-year, eleven-year period—is insanity. With ‘Spinal Tap’ alone, if that’d been the only thing he ever did, he influenced my generation enormously. ‘Spinal Tap’—when it came out, I was in college, and it was like a splitting-the-atom moment. You have those moments where you see something truly remarkable.”
It sounds like Conan really admired Rob. He shared that it’s tragedies like Rob and Michele’s death that shake him to his core:
“This is what we’re all contending with. It is something you don’t think about—if you’re lucky, you don’t think about it for the first couple of decades of your life—and then it’s people saying, ‘Did you hear?’ And you walk around concussed for a week. So that’s what it is now, I guess.”
Oof. How heartbreaking. Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know (below).
[Image via Michele Reiner/Instagram, MEGA/WENN]
