LOS ANGELES (AP) — Some of Rob and Michele Reiner's closest friends, including actors Billy Crystal, Albert Brooks, Martin Short and Larry David, have released a statement mourning the couple and praising their love of film and country.
“Absorbing all he had learned from his father Carl and his mentor Norman Lear, Rob Reiner not only was a great comic actor, he became a master story teller. There is no other director who has his range. From comedy to drama to ‘mockumentary’ to documentary he was always at the top of his game. He charmed audiences. They trusted him. They lined up to see his films," the group said in a statement released first to The Associated Press.
“His comedic touch was beyond compare, his love of getting the music of the dialogue just right, and his sharpening of the edge of a drama was simply elegant,” it said of Rob Reiner, whose films included “A Few Good Men,” “When Harry Met Sally..." and “The Princess Bride."
The statement was released two days after Rob and Michele Reiner were found dead in their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Their son, Nick Reiner, was charged Tuesday with two counts of murder and is suspected of stabbing his parents to death.
The joint statement came from some of Reiner's longtime collaborators and contemporaries, including Crystal, Brooks, Short, David and their spouses. The signatories included writer Alan Zweibel, composer and lyricist Marc Shaiman, director Barry Levinson and former U.S. Ambassador to Spain James Costos.
“For the actors, he loved them. For the writers he made them better. His greatest gift was freedom. If you had an idea, he listened, he brought you into the process. They always felt they were working as a team. To be in his hands as a film maker was a privilege but that is only part of his legacy,” the statement said.
The Reiners were major Democratic contributors and champions of numerous political causes.
“Rob was also a passionate, brave citizen, who not only cared for this country he loved, he did everything he could to make it better and with his loving wife Michele, he had the perfect partner. Strong and determined, Michele and Rob Reiner devoted a great deal of their lives for the betterment of our fellow citizens... They were a special force together — dynamic, unselfish and inspiring,” the statement said.
“We were their friends, and we will miss them forever,” it said, before concluding with a quote from one of Reiner's favorite films, the Christmastime classic "It's a Wonderful Life."
“'Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?’ You have no idea," the statement concludes.
The deaths of the Reiners have stunned Hollywood, especially since their family embodied a gentle and comedic spirit.
Their deaths drew tributes from numerous stars and political figures on Sunday and Monday, but many of those closest to the Reiners had yet to release statements.
Honoree Rob Reiner, second from left, poses with his wife Michele and children Jake Reiner, Romy Reiner and Nick Reiner at the 41st Annual Chaplin Award Gala at Avery Fisher Hall on Monday, April 28, 2014 in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Flowers cover the Walk of Fame star for Rob Reiner Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
ADDITION ADDS MAIDEN NAME: FILE - Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner arrive on the red carpet at the State Department for the Kennedy Center Honors gala dinner, Dec. 2, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Christine Baranski was in the playground outside St. Matthew’s Church in Bedford, New York, about three years ago when she came across Matthew Guard, artistic director of the Grammy-nominated Skylark Vocal Ensemble.
“I love choral music,” she told him.
An Emmy- and Tony-Award winning actor, Baranski went on to attend some of his concerts.
“I was a fangirl basically,” she recalled. “And I think we just said, `Wouldn’t it be fun to do something together?’”
Baranski agreed to narrate a music-and-spoken word version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” last December at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, which owns the original manuscript of the 1843 classic. A recording was made last June at the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and released Dec. 4 on the LSO Live label.
She will perform it again with the group on Thursday night at the Morgan, which is displaying the manuscript through Jan. 11, and again the following night at The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, where she will again portray the acerbic Agnes van Rhijn when Season 4 of HBO’s “The Gilded Age” starts filming season four on Feb. 23.
“I have this thing about keeping language alive, keeping beautiful, well-written language,” she said. “Dickens, Stoppard, Shakespeare. We’re getting awfully lazy in our use of the English language.”
She compliments Julian Fellowes, creator of “The Gilded Age” and “Downton Abbey,” for distinguished prose.
“I think he’d play Agnes if he could,” she said. “He gives her the witty stuff.”
Baranski leaned on the skills that earned her an Emmy for “Cybill” and Tonys for “The Real Thing” and “Rumors.”
“You get to bring to life a lot of different characters, none the least of which is Ebenezer,” she said at the library this month. “It’s wonderful for an actor to differentiate in as subtle a way as possible these different characters. As an acting piece, it’s wonderful. And not many women have done it. It’s been done by Alistair Cooke and Patrick Stewart and Patrick Page and all these great actors — but I get to do it with a chorus.”
Guard weaves in underscoring by composer Benedict Sheehan with Baranski’s words and 10 carols that include “Silent Night” and “Deck the Halls” plus “Auld Lang Syne.”
Reciting the entire story would have created a Wagnerian-length evening.
“This manuscript itself is about 30,000 words and we needed about 5,000 to make it a concert length,” Guard said. “I tried to create space in the narrative for obvious musical exclamation points or emotional feelings, almost like arias in an opera.”
Sheehan had worked together with Guard on a 2020 recording “Once Upon a Time” that weaved together the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.”
“I said why don’t you commission me to write choral underscoring for the narrative that can kind of stitch together these different choral pieces?” Sheehan said.
Baranski got narration experience in 2023 when she replaced Liev Schreiber with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall for Beethoven’s “Egmont.”
“I could do this the rest of my career,” she thought at the time. “Just put me in a concert hall surrounded by great musicians.”
After working with dialect coach Howard Samuelsohn, Baranski practiced on Zoom to hone a 19th-century voice and avoid cliché.
“I said this is a good warm up for Aunt Agnes because it’s that kind of speech we were taught at Juilliard,” the 73-year-old Baranski said, recalling lessons from Edith Skinner decades ago.
“Sometimes it’s just a question of modulating your voice, just different rhythms and staccato or legato,” she said. “I want the voice of the Ghost of Christmas past to be disembodied… ethereal.”
She didn’t have an urge to join in on the carols.
“We take from each other,” she said. “When the chorus first heard my version of it, I think it subtly influenced the feeling of it and I take from the mood of the carol and bring it into my interpretation.”
“It’s a really exciting back-and-forth actually,” Guard said. “It’s not really totally clear who’s driving the bus at times.”
Baranski hopes the project has a future.
“We want to film this someday in the Morgan,” she said. “Make this a yearly event at the Morgan, because here’s the manuscript and people. It’s just one of those things like Handel’s `Messiah’ or `The Nutcracker.’”
She’s going to gift the CD to her grandchildren, four boys ranging from ages 2 to 12. Among her previous holiday experiences was portraying Martha May Whovier in the 2000 movie “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
“They’re curiously not interested in my even being Martha May in `The Grinch,’” Baranski explained. “Their friends sometimes say: `That’s your grandmother.’ But I just want to be their grandma — do you know what I mean — and not somebody?”
Skylark Artistic Director Matthew Guard and Christine Baranski are interviewed beside "A Christmas Carol In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas" by Charles Dickens, Dec. 1843," at The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Skylark Artistic Director Matthew Guard and Christine Baranski are interviewed beside "A Christmas Carol In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas" by Charles Dickens, Dec. 1843," at The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Skylark Artistic Director Matthew Guard and Christine Baranski are interviewed beside "A Christmas Carol In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas" by Charles Dickens, Dec. 1843," at The Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
