Conan O’Brien shared his first reactions on Sunday as news of the shocking killing of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Reiner hit home. At a holiday party hosted by Conan on December 13, the couple was seen mingling with his family and friends, including Conan’s wife Liza Powell O’Brien.
“I knew Rob and Michele, and then increasingly got closer and closer to them,” Conan recalled in an interview for The New Yorker. “They were just such lovely people.”
Conan vividly described a scene from that night: “I was in shock for quite some time afterward. There’s no other word for it.” He elaborated that multiple sources reported tensions brewing at the party, leading to heated exchanges between Rob and his son Nick, who ended up being charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
For Conan, the pain is palpable: “It’s just so awful. I think about how Rob felt about things that are happening in the country, how involved he was, how much he put himself out there—and to have that voice go quiet in an instant is still hard for me to comprehend.”