Jake Reiner is speaking publicly about the devastating loss of his parents for the first time.
Eight months after legendary filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were found stabbed to death inside their Brentwood home, their eldest son is opening up about the unimaginable aftermath.
Related: Billy Crystal Shares Details Of Final Conversation With Longtime Friend Rob Reiner
In a brand-new sit-down interview with KABC 7 News in Los Angeles, Jake, 34, got real about the months since his parents’ deaths. Of course, as we’ve been reporting, his younger brother, Nick Reiner, 32, has been charged with two counts of murder in their deaths.
Jake began the new interview by saying:
“Nobody really understands what it’s like to go through something like that until you’re living it. It’s been eight months. It feels like eight years at the same time. And it also feels like eight minutes because every moment that I wake up, I’m reminded of my reality.”
The horror began on December 14, 2025, when his younger sister, Romy, tried calling him.
At first, he screened the call. Then, she called again:
“Romy called me, and I screened it, because I thought at the time, I’m in the middle of something, you know, I’ll call her back. And then, she called immediately again, and I knew at that point that something was wrong. Romy told me our dad was dead, and then she said, ‘I can’t find mom.’ I immediately went into shock.”
Jake had spent a decade working as a news reporter, including covering crime scenes. But nothing could have prepared him for confronting tragedy at the home where he grew up. He said:
“As a reporter, I did it for ten years, I came up on crime scenes all the time, but when it’s your crime scene, a crime scene at your childhood home, it’s like the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen.”
That same night, Jake learned that police were investigating his brother as a prime suspect.
Related: The Sad Link Between Martin Short’s Daughter Katherine & Rob Reiner’s Son Nick
Asked whether he was surprised, he declined to answer. Instead, he spoke about the complicated grief of losing both parents while also having a sibling behind bars:
“He’s in jail. It’s like, I physically lost my parents, and then Nick was arrested. Now it’s just me and Romy, and we have to navigate this by ourselves essentially. For me, it manifests into anger. It manifests into rage, into how unfair this was, how I didn’t get a say in what happened. I didn’t get to stop it from happening. I had no choice in the matter. I just have to accept the reality of it. And to me, that is just one of the most infuriating parts of all of this.”
Now, this year’s December 14 will mark one year since Rob and Michele were killed, and Jake says he still can’t make sense of it:
“I’ll never understand. I don’t care how it’s explained to me. I don’t care what facts come out. I will never understand why this happened.”
Nick’s struggles with addiction and mental health had been publicly known for years. In 2015, he worked with his father on Being Charlie, a film Nick wrote and Rob directed that drew loosely from Nick’s own experiences.
For Jake, that collaboration reflected how deeply his parents continued to care for their son:
“My parents had unconditional love for all three of us. I can tell you they never stopped wanting to help him. They never stopped helping him. And I think that that project was a way for my dad to try and connect with him.”
Jake has not spoken with Nick and has not attended his court hearings, FYI. He also declined to discuss Nick’s efforts to access money from the family trust for his defense.
Related: How Rob Reiner’s Kids Feel About Nick Facing Death Penalty
For now, Jake says his priorities are supporting Romy, helping their aunt and finding a way forward through grief. And perhaps most poignantly, he has come to understand that grief cannot really be measured against anyone else’s:
“The worst kind of grief is your own because you’re the one living through it. And so, just because I lost my parents in the way that I did, it doesn’t mean that ‘you’ losing a loved one in some other way is not also devastating. You can’t compare it, because it’s what you’re going through, and there are a lot of people out there that are living through that, and I think for the first time in my life, I see them.”
Wow.
You can see more (below):
Today on ABC7, my interview with Jake Reiner. He talks about his relationship with his parents, the devastating events surrounding their murders – and his relationship with his brother Nick, now awaiting trial.
I’m grateful to Jake for trusting me with his story. | @ABC7 at 5pm. pic.twitter.com/14xKJdNGoL
— Marc Cota-Robles (@abc7marccr) August 27, 2026
Ugh.
Sending all the love and light in the world…
