Jake Reiner: It is infuriating to accept reality of parents’ deaths

By Casey Cooper-Fiske, Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter

Jake Reiner has said it is “infuriating” to accept the reality of his parents’ deaths.

Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner, and wife Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead from apparent stab wounds in their home in Los Angeles last December.

Their son Nick, 32, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Speaking to Good Morning America, Jake, 35, said: “I physically lost my parents, and then Nick was arrested, now it’s just me and Romy (his sister), 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.”

He added that his parents “never stopped helping” his brother Nick through reported struggles with addiction and mental health, with 2015 film Being Charlie, which Nick wrote and Rob directed, being loosely based on his life.

Jake added: “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.”

He went on to say that the eight months since the deaths had felt like “eight years”, adding: “It also feels like eight minutes because every moment that I wake up, I’m reminded of my reality.”