Jake Reiner Says Parents Rob and Michele Reiner ‘Never Stopped Wanting to Help’ Son Nick

Jake Reiner spoke in a new interview about his parents Rob and Michele Reiner’s support for his younger brother, Nick Reiner, in the years before they were murdered.

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Jake Reiner opened up in a new interview about his parents’ “unconditional love” for his brother Nick, who faces charges for their alleged murder

He described the day of his parents’ deaths as losing more than half his family, including Nick’s arrest

Jake shared his ongoing grief and anger, revealing he’s sought counseling to cope with the devastating loss

Jake Reiner is opening up about his late parents’ love for their younger son, Nick Reiner.

In a new interview with KABC-TV, his first sit-down talk since the Dec. 14 deaths of his parents Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner, Jake, 35, spoke about his brother, who was arrested and indicted on two counts of first-degree murder. Nick, 32, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Jake reflected on the 2015 film, Being Charlie, which Rob and Nick collaborated on and was loosely based on Nick’s life and struggles with addiction.

“My parents had unconditional love for all three of us,” Jake told KABC-TV of himself, Nick and their younger sister, Romy Reiner. “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.”

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Jake described the day of his parents’ slaying as the moment he lost more than half his family. When asked by interviewer Marc Cota-Robles whether that included Nick, he replied, “I mean, he’s in jail so… you know, it’s like I physically lost my parents and then Nick was arrested and now it’s just me and Romy.”

Eight months on, Jake is still struggling to make sense of what happened to his family.

“I’ll never understand. I don’t care how it’s explained to me,” he said. “I don’t care what facts come out. I will never understand why this happened.”

Jake said his grief “manifests into anger.”

“It manifests into rage, into how unfair this was, how I didn’t get a say in what happened,” he said. “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.”

According to KABC-TV, Jake declined to discuss his current feelings toward his brother and said he hasn’t spoken to him, not sharing whether he’d want to. He also declined to speak about Nick’s recent request to access his family trust fund to help pay his legal fees.

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In the time since the tragic murders, Jake told KABC-TV that he’s done a lot of grief counseling.

“The worst kind of grief is your own because you’re the one living through it,” he said. “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.”

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Jake’s full interview with Cota-Robles, which lasted over an hour, is set to air Thursday evening on KABC-TV, with additional portions airing Friday on Good Morning America.

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