"I'll have what she's having," says a lady at a nearby table after Meg Ryan performs the most famous fake orgasm in cinema. And that lady, almost an extra in Rob Reiner's romantic comedy, is much more. That lady, with gray hair, a brown knit vest, and a mischievous look, is Estelle Reiner and, as her last name reveals, she is also the director's mother. That scene is also a display of the constant intertwining between family and professional ties of a clan that found its place entirely in the entertainment world.
Let's first create a small family tree to locate them. Carl Reiner, the father, is one of the great legends of American comedy. Estelle, the mother, was an actress and ended her days as a cabaret singer. Rob, their son who was found dead with signs of violence this Monday alongside his wife, Michele, was the director of When Harry Met Sally, Stand by Me, and The Princess Bride. Their four children, Tracy, Nick, Rommy, and Jake, also have careers in the audiovisual world.
Now let the intersections between them begin. The totemic figure of this whole structure is Carl Reiner, creator and star of The Dick Van Dyke Show, winner of six Emmy Awards, and the figure under whose shadow his son always stood. Rob Reiner mentioned in an interview on PBS that as a child, he asked his parents to change his name, his father thought it was to distance himself from him, and when they asked what he wanted his new name to be, he said "Carl". "I wanted to be like him, I loved him and admired him," the son acknowledged in that same interview. But his figure also intimidated him, as he would admit in many other instances, due to the magnitude of his presence in the industry.
Father and son would eventually cross paths. The first time was in a film by the head of the family, The Jerk (1979), with Steve Martin. In a scene from that movie, a truck driver picks up the protagonist and asks, 'St. Louis?' The protagonist replies, 'No, Navin Johnson.' One of the participants in that hilarious dialogue, driving the truck, is Rob Reiner. The son also had a small appearance in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982).
However, the true family moment, the crossing of generations, occurs in When Harry Met Sally, with Rob Reiner behind the camera. There is the famous line from the mother, Estelle, after Meg Ryan's orgasm at Katz's. And there is also a cameo by the director's eldest daughter, actress Tracy Reiners, as part of Sally's group of friends. Tracy had also made a cameo in one of her father's early films, The Sure Thing (1985).
It won't be just Rob Reiner's eldest daughter, Tracy, who will appear in her father's films. The second son, Jake, also has a small role in Flipped (2010) and, especially, in Being Charlie (2015) where the family story plays a crucial role in understanding the entire Reiner family dynamic.
That film - or mockumentary - is directed by Rob Reiner, but the script is co-written by his son, Nick, the third in line. The story addresses drug problems and life in a rehabilitation center of a boy portrayed by Nick Robinson. But in reality, what is narrated there are the addiction issues of Nick Reiner, who, according to People magazine, the police now consider the main suspect in the murder of his parents.
In the Reiner clan, there is still a fourth daughter, Rommy, who is also embarking on a filmmaking path. The youngest of the family has had some small cameos like in the Netflix movie People Like You (2023) and, above all, she has just written and is directing - like her father - a short film, Here to Stay, where she is also the protagonist.