A podcast host who had numerous exchanges with Rob Reiner‘s son Nick Reiner is offering memories of their conversations that took place years ago during seemingly happier times.
Actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner was found dead at 78 with wife Michele in their Brentwood home on Sunday. Nick Reiner, the couple’s 32-year-old son, was booked that night on suspicion of murder and has been held in a Los Angeles County jail without bail, according to police. The case is set to be presented to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday for filing consideration.
Nick Reiner, who has been open over the years about bouts with drug abuse and homelessness, worked on the 2015 indie film Being Charlie with his dad. Rob Reiner directed the Nick Robinson-led feature from a semi-autobiographical script co-written by Nick Reiner about a successful actor with political aspirations whose son is resistant to undergoing recovery from substance abuse.
At the time of the film’s release, Nick Reiner joined podcast hosts Dave Manheim and Chris O’Connor at Manheim’s New York City apartment to record an episode of Dopey, which aims to take a humorous look at recovery. (O’Connor died of an overdose in 2018.) This was the first of four recorded conversations between Reiner and Manheim, and the pair would also connect on the phone and via text over the ensuing couple of years.
“He was young and smart and handsome and new in recovery, and I was very excited to have him on our show because I was such a fan of Rob Reiner,” Manheim tells The Hollywood Reporter about his first sit-down with Nick Reiner. Adds the host, a recovering IV heroin addict who is 10 years sober: “I could relate to his stories.”
During a 2015 TIFF press event for Being Charlie, Rob and Michele Reiner told the Los Angeles Times that they should have prioritized listening to their son over recovery professionals when he emphasized that mandated stints in rehab were unhelpful for him. Said Rob Reiner at the time, “When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen.” The filmmaker went on to say that “at times, it was really rough” as he and his son were navigating how to dramatize their relationship in the film.
Michele Reiner (left), Rob Reiner and Nick Reiner pose in Los Angeles in August 2013.
Michael Buckner/Getty Images for Teen Vogue
Manheim, who estimates having had 10 conversations with Nick Reiner over the years, recalls Reiner as struggling with recovery at the time that they spoke. “I don’t remember that he was particularly interested in 12-step work,” says Manheim, who emphasizes that Reiner was at a young age to be expected to focus on recovery. “I know he had been to treatment. I know he was involved in writing. I know he loved to play pick-up basketball in New York City. I think he was interested in spirituality.”
As for Nick Reiner’s personality, the host remembers him as having an optimistic disposition, particularly for conversations that were being recorded. “He demonstrated a young love of life, to be honest with you, and hopefulness,” Manheim says. “He wanted to be a part of what me and Chris were doing. He wanted to have fun in recovery, and he wanted to be a successful entertainment writer.”
Manheim says he sensed that Reiner felt pressure to live up to the successful entertainers in his family. This included his filmmaker father, photographer mother and grandfather Carl Reiner, a comedy legend who died in 2020 at 98.
“In the little picture, when he was actually making things — when he wrote Being Charlie, or he had an idea — I think he was just another person with an idea,” Manheim says. “[But] I think big-picture, when you’re up against Rob Reiner and Carl Reiner, and you’re a struggling drug addict, the pressure is immense because how accomplished is anybody at age 24?”
As it turned out, the communication between Nick Reiner and the host would come to a rather abrupt end. When Reiner first guested on Dopey, he had offered in the middle of their conversation to call his dad, and Manheim assured him that was unnecessary. However, after co-host O’Connor died in 2018, Manheim was concerned about the podcast’s future and felt that a visit from Rob Reiner could help the show get attention. But when he suggested this to Nick Reiner in late 2018, it seemingly offended Reiner, who effectively ended their communication at that point and never responded to what the host estimates were roughly 150 texts sent to Reiner over the next seven years.
“I wish I hadn’t asked him to have Rob Reiner come on the show, or at least not when I did, because it pushed him away,” Manheim admits.
As THR previously published, Nick Reiner revealed during a 2018 Dopey appearance that he had destroyed his family’s guest house while “spun out on uppers” and that he once suffered what he termed a “cocaine heart attack.”
Manheim adds about Reiner and their falling-out, “This is probably not a fair thing to say, but I’ll say it: If he was pursuing serious recovery, I think he would have been more apt to contribute to the show as time went on because that’s something people in recovery want to do. They want to preserve friendships and carry the message and all those things.”