Police took Rob Reiner’s son into custody after the Hollywood director of hits including When Harry Met Sally and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home, US media reported Monday.
Networks CBS and ABC said Nick Reiner was arrested, and the Los Angeles Times reported he was booked into the Los Angeles County jail on suspicion of murder, citing jail records.
Los Angeles deputy police chief Alan Hamilton had said earlier they were seeking to interview “every family member” of the 78-year-old actor-director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.
The bodies were discovered Sunday (local time) and police said they were treating the case as an “apparent homicide”.
As tributes poured in for Reiner, Donald Trump unleashed a crude broadside on the Hollywood icon, appearing to blame the deaths on the director’s “raging” criticism of the US President.
Several US news media cited police sources as saying the couple were stabbed, while celebrity news website TMZ, which first broke the story, reported that their throats had been cut by a family member during an argument.
Reiner directed classic films including 1984’s rock music mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, fantasy gem The Princess Bride from 1987, and the 1992 courtroom drama A Few Good Men.
His films spanned everything from laugh-out-loud comedy to searing drama and earned him a global following.
Reiner was politically active and an outspoken supporter of progressive causes – potentially a reason for the extraordinary statement by Trump on Monday less than a day after the killings.
While movie fans around the world grieved, Trump claimed Reiner died “reportedly because of the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”.
“He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness,” the president posted.
Democratic politicians and Hollywood figures expressed shock over the deaths.
Former US Vice-President Kamala Harris was friends with the couple and said on X she was “devastated to learn of their passing,” while former President Barack Obama said he and his wife Michelle were “heartbroken”.
Reiner gave television and movie viewers “some of our most cherished stories on screen. But beneath all of the stories he produced was a deep belief in the goodness of people,” Obama said on X.
Movie heavyweight John Cusack said he was “at a loss for any words that make sense” about the deaths.
Horror and thriller writer Stephen King, whose novella The Body was the basis for Reiner’s 1986 coming-of-age classic Stand By Me, lauded a “wonderful friend”.
Reiner rose to acting fame as the oafish son-in-law Michael “Meathead” Stivic on groundbreaking 1970s sitcom All in the Family, before transitioning to directing. Even as a force behind the camera, he often appeared in cameo roles in his own films.
He directed the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, and famously cast his real-life mother Estelle Reiner to utter the line “I’ll have what she’s having” after Ryan’s classic fake orgasm scene in Katz’s Delicatessen.
His 1992 thriller A Few Good Men, starring Hollywood heavyweights Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
Reiner backed efforts to secure equal marriage rights for LGBTQ people and create California’s First 5 program, which provides child development programs funded by taxes on tobacco products.
He also helped fundraise for Democratic presidential candidates including Hillary Clinton.
He was the son of legendary comedian Carl Reiner, who won 11 Emmy Awards for his television performances and wrote screenplays with movie greats Mel Brooks and Neil Simon.
-Agence France-Presse