Jerry O’Connell Says He Owes ‘Everything’ to Late Rob Reiner

Jerry O’Connell honored late Stand by Me director Rob Reiner with a powerful tribute hours after news broke of the Hollywood icon’s death.

Appearing on the Monday, December 15, episode of CBS Mornings, the 51-year-old actor admitted he was still in “shock” after learning Reiner, 78, and wife Michele Singer Reiner were killed in their Los Angeles home.

“You know, I don’t mean this as any offense to my parents who are still with us … [but] Rob was like a father to me,” O’Connell said. “It’s just surreal.”

O’Connell noted that it was “really shocking” how information about the couple’s deaths “sort of trickled out” on Sunday, December 14. TMZ initially reported that two people — a man and a woman — were found dead at Rob and Michele’s address. The victims’ identities were revealed at first, but their ages matched those of Rob and Michele.

A spokesperson for the family later confirmed their “sudden” deaths in a statement to Variety.

Multiple outlets reported that the pair’s son Nick Reiner was a person of interest in the case, with a source telling Us Weekly there was speculation about a family member’s role in Rob and Michele’s deaths. The Los Angeles Police Department Parker City Jail told Us on Monday that Nick is in custody. His bail is set at $4 million.

While reflecting on Rob’s legacy on the CBS morning show, O’Connell looked back on filming the 1986 movie Stand by Me, which also starred Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix and Corey Feldman.

“I worked with [Rob] when I was 11, and at that point in my life, you know, I wasn’t getting into trouble criminally, but I was always getting in trouble for speaking out loud in class and not being able to keep my mouth shut. My mother would always say, ‘Sit on your hands and shut up.’ … And I got to that set of Stand by Me and I ad-libbed a scene one day early on in shooting and he was like, ‘Cut! Jerry!’ And I thought, ‘Oh boy, here we go. Why didn’t I sit on my hands and shut up?’” O’Connell recalled. “And he went, ‘Hey, Jerry, keep going, man. That’s what I’m talking about right there. Go, more.’”

The actor summed up Rob’s impact on his life with one simple message. “I’m not making a joke, I know my house is dark, [but] everything I have is because of Rob Reiner. … It’s just a sad, shocking day,” he said.

O’Connell also pointed out that as the son of “huge comedy star” Carl Reiner, Rob was an early Hollywood “nepo baby” — but he “did the work.”

“I can tell you as someone who worked with him, it was someone who had done the work and he had so much experience by the time he was directing Stand by Me … He would just feed us lines and new lines that weren’t written, ad-libbed lines, and that was just from hundreds of hours of television, thousands of hours of working there,” O’Connell said. “The guy did the work.”

Along with his televised tribute, O’Connell shared a throwback photo of himself and the filmmaker from the set of Stand by Me via Instagram. “Love you, Rob. Sincerely,” he wrote.