Nick Reiner and the Problems Money Can’t Solve

Nick Reiner’s next pretrial hearing in the apparent patricide of his parents Rob and Michele Reiner is Sept. 15. Their son, who struggled with drug addiction and severe mental health issues, has pled not guilty. Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office prosecutors recently added a charge of premeditation to their double homicide case, alleging he lay in wait to fatally stab his parents at their Brentwood home.

For other families quietly and often despairingly living with similar problems of addiction and mental illness involving their children, the tragedy is an unnerving, looming specter — a worst-case scenario made real. The wealthy Reiners for decades accessed every form of professional assistance their money could buy. They were as sophisticated about their collective plight as possible, even together writing and directing a social-issue feature film, Being Charlie, about it. “It was our life for years and years and years,” Nick told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015 of his personal battles when the project premiered.

In the end, though, none of this mattered. The family was overmatched and outdone by the scope of their crisis.

In conversations with Los Angeles therapists whose practices include the treatment of dual-diagnosis clients from affluent families where the parents work in the entertainment industry, THR found that the Reiner tragedy — the true nightmare — has reverberated as extreme endpoint and dark mirror. It’s a reminder that “there’s trauma across all socioeconomic levels,” according to Sarah Mourra. And yet, she adds, “an event like this makes you think about the exquisite pain of how having all the fame and money and power in the world isn’t an escape from the difficulty of mental illness.”

Behind the scenes, many Hollywood families are intimately familiar with the anguish and desperation the Reiners and their other children faced long before the killings. It’s mostly kept out of view, although legal troubles and media cycles sometimes surface details.

Carrie Fisher, daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, famously wrote about her addiction and recovery. Chet Hanks, son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, spoke about his coke problem. Martin Sheen described riding the “rollercoaster” of his then-45-year-old son Charlie’s well-publicized addictions. Michael Douglas, in a letter to a federal judge who was considering sentencing his son Cameron on drug charges, pleaded for mercy in 2010. “I have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father,” he wrote, referring to Kirk Douglas. “I’m not sure I can comprehend it with two generations to deal with.”

Explains therapist Suzanne Wallach, “Avoidance is more common when you have money and intermediaries. The barriers for people who live in the one percent of the one percent are much different. There is no bottom to hit. There’s always a safety net.” Often, this includes a retinue of staff — assistants, nannies, security guards — involved in the raising and protection of children. “These parents have often existed at a distance, leaving for long periods to work, on tour or on set.” Lance Dodes concurs, underscoring, “extreme wealth allows you to gloss over things.”

Wallach notes that celebrity families are, on average, “more distrustful of therapists, of treatment centers, of the police because of their privacy concerns and because they believe they’ll be taken advantage of financially. So, their kids may not receive care until situations have already evolved, becoming very difficult to manage.”

For their part, the Reiners attempted to work through their predicament not just via the therapeutic process but the creative one. Being Charlie, which debuted at TIFF, was a familial collaboration. The film centered, according to its THR review, on “a young man from a wealthy, film-industry family struggling with drug addiction and profound daddy issues.” Nick told THR then, “From the beginning, I only saw my side and he only saw his, and through the [development] process we were both able to have a window into how each other were feeling during that time.” Added Rob, who did press alongside his son, “It was way beyond a catharsis.”

While promoting the release, Rob and Michele described their alienation from the medical establishment. “We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son,” he said. She agreed, explaining, “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”

Rande Dorn shares that while many dynamics for these families are universal, some are specific to Hollywood’s creative community. “There’s this tension between artists in the [entertainment] industry and the traditional responsibilities to a family. Much of this is about what’s required in the artist’s life to do their work: where their attention goes, especially when they’re deep in a prolonged creative process, which is often greedy for their attention. Folks juggle. How do you give to this thing that may be your first love — your creativity — while also giving to their families what they really need, too?”

Dorn observes that the children of celebrities can be damaged by early scrutiny. “They have to deal with their parents’ legacy and having to act a certain way in public,” she says. “They have to manage themselves and their emotions from a young age. They can’t be messy or exploratory, or if they are, it has to be in the shadows.”

One of the toughest challenges for families contending with substance dependency and psychiatric disorders is, at times, simply letting go. “It may be that there are cases where it’s not in the interest of anybody to continue bailing someone out,” says Dodes. “It’s not just a black hole for the family. It’s a black hole for the child. It’s not helping anyone.” Notes Wallach, “if you have a sick kid you might not have a happy ending — no matter how much you love them.”