Conan O’Brien discussed the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, for the first time, who were close friends of the comedian. In December, O’Brien was at the center of the tragedy when news broke that the couple had attended his holiday party the night before they were murdered.
Rob and Michele’s son, Nick Reiner, was taken into custody on Dec. 14, after the discovery of his parents’ bodies at their home in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Brentwood. Los Angeles County prosecutors later filed two counts of first-degree murder against him. Authorities have said Nick killed his parents in a gruesome double homicide.
Sources previously told Rolling Stone that the night before they were found dead, Rob and Michele had asked if they could bring their son as their guest to O’Brien’s holiday party. At the party, Nick was exhibiting “antisocial behaviour,” including staring at people, sources said. TMZ was the first to report that Nick attended the party, with their sources claiming that Nick and his father got into a “very loud argument.”
“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,” said O’Brien when speaking to The New Yorker. “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. I mean, there’s no other word for it. It’s just very—it’s so awful. It’s just so awful.”
Rob — an acclaimed director, producer, and political activist — was an outspoken liberal who criticised George W. Bush and Donald Trump, often turning his lens to focus on political issues he cared about including LBJ and Shock and Awe, which were films urging Americans to look more closely at their government.
“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,” O’Brien told The New Yorker.
“These people are so larger than life, especially if you’ve grown up watching them or appreciating their work,” he added, looking back at Rob’s prolific career. “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.”
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O’Brien continued, “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.”
From Rolling Stone US
