July 26, 2021 • 25 mins
You can’t drop in on Rob and Michele and not expect a lively conversation and a whole lotta laughs. This clever, committed couple knows how to use the middle of the night right: arguing about the Kennedy assassination and enjoying each other as a “best friend you can have sex with.” You can reverse the order, too, and it still works!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage last. Some couples you feel
(00:40):
like you could just sit around the table with forever.
Case in point, Rob and Michelle Reiner interesting, smart, and
very very funny. We visited Robin Michelle at their stunning
New England type home in Brentwood, California, where they've lived
for close to thirty years. Before them, it was owned
by Norman Lear, whose series All in the Family was
(01:04):
Rob's first real acting vehicle, and before that, Henry Fond
lived there. His beautiful rose garden still flowers there each year.
Rob's whole life is so steeped in classic Hollywood it
would have been impossible for me not to ask about
his famous father, Carl and his mom Mastelle. Your folks
(01:25):
were married for a long time, Yes, almost sixty five years.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, so that has to have an
influence on well, yeah, I mean, my mother said, And
this was when they had their sixtieth anniversary and they
asked her what the secret was, and she said, find
someone who can stand you, not somebody you can put
(01:48):
up with somebody who can put up with you. And
I think that's the key when you see a role
model them. And I remember your parents very well. They
were in our house a lot and you and your
father loved your mother singing and he supported it. Him.
He was he was like her roadie. He really would
set up the music stand. He would you invite the friends.
(02:08):
He was like, he was like our manage. Yeah, and
we went and it was it was adorable. I just
had to love him for it. Yeah. And what about
your family? Well, your parents, did you have come from
a strong marriage? You know, but we're marriage really Well,
my mother was in Auschwitz and lost her entire family
and moved to the States, to Oklahoma of all places,
(02:30):
and then moved to New York and met my father.
They got married very very quickly, and it was not
a good marriage. So well, she must have had a
lot of scars. Yeah, I mean, my god, but not
not good role models. Yeah, and this is this your
first marriage? Yeah, so how did you get the courage
to do it? Um? The beginning didn't start around so
(02:54):
well because we were we were going to meet each
other and then it didn't happen. We have a good
story though of how it's a really good story. Well
because I, like I said, I've been single for ten
years and making a complete and utter mess of my
romantic life in and out of different relationships. And that
(03:18):
really became the basis for one Harry Matzali was the
whole idea of men and women and how do you know,
how do they get together in all this? And we're
in pre production and Barry Snenfeld was sitting there with
me and I look at this copy of Premier magazine
that's sitting on the table there, and there's a picture
on the cover of Michelle Pfeiffer, And I said, you know,
I heard she's getting divorced. You know, I had had
(03:40):
lunch with her like six months earlier on a professional thing,
nothing and yeah, lunch. And I said, you know, maybe
I'll give her a call. I don't you know, I'm
like grasping at straws. I don't know what the hell
I'm doing. So maybe I give her a call. And
Barry says, no, no, no, no, you're not going to
call her. He says, I've a friend in New Yorker
name as Michelle Singer. You're going to marry her. He
says that like that, and I said, who is She
(04:03):
says a friend of mine. She's a photographer, I know.
And I said, does she's smoke? That's all I said,
because Penny was a big smoker. She smoked like four
packs that I mean, she was I couldn't stand it around.
And he said yes, and I said, I don't want
to meet her. You know, she has a smoke thirty
years but at the time, she did smoke. And that
was that. And he came back to me and he said,
(04:25):
do you want to meet Rob Browner. I was like, okay, yeah,
And I mean I didn't have an opinion one way
or the other. And then he came back and he said,
you know, well he's not interested because you smoke her.
I was like, I fuck it, you know, I'm serious.
That that was that. So then months goes by, and
now we're going through the picture and we're about three
quarters away through shooting and I'm doing this scene on
(04:45):
the Upper West Side outdoors and I look over across
the street and I see Susan Barry's at that time girlfriend.
Now they're married, and I said, and there's a very
attractive woman standing with I said, who's that woman there
and says that that's Michelle Singer. I said, that's cheer smoker.
I said that one. I said, what's she doing? He says,
We're just going to go have lunch when we break
in five minutes, we're gonna go lunch. I said, okay,
(05:08):
maybe I'll join you. And I really I wormed myself
into lung worm my way in. And now we're sitting
at this place docks on the upper west side. Michelle
is sitting next to Nora Ephron and I hear over
there Michelle is saying, well, I can make better vishy
swas than this, you know whatever. And I'm thinking, Jesus, Jess,
what a bitch, you know. But I'm really attracted to her,
(05:30):
you know. And so we walk back to the set
and I could kind of chat her up a little
bit and talk and that, and then you know, she
goes and then I say, with Barry, ask her. Maybe
I'll ask her if she wants to go out. He says, okay.
So we make a date. We make a date to
go to Cafe Luxembourg because I was going to shoot
the next day on Monday. This was a Sunday. We
(05:51):
get there and wed seated, and the first thing she
says is, look, if this doesn't work out, I don't
want this to hurt your relationship with Barry, your friendship
with Barry. And I'm thinking we didn't even order drink,
so it's already not working out, and I'm sweating. I'm
so nervous. She's running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes
(06:12):
because she knows I don't want smoking, and she's going
to smoke over there, and back and forth like this.
So it was crazy. Anyway, we got through that, and
then we started seeing each other a little bit through it.
But it's like that he's shooting one night and they
finished shooting and I go, let's go to this bar
on Canal Street and we go to bar. He's forty
one years old. He's never had a drink in his life,
and he's never ordered a drink in a bar. He
(06:33):
didn't know what to order, and I'm thinking, what am I?
What's going on here? You know? So he ordered a
port I don't know. I don't know what it is.
I mean, I've been to bars, but I don't drink,
you know, so anybody. So then after that, it just
I don't know, it just clicked and we never looked back.
I mean seriously, I never had any downs about it.
But also you change at the end of the movie.
(06:53):
I did because in the way we had it, initially
it was going to be just they were never going
to get together. They were going to see each other
and then go their separate ways. And then because I
couldn't figure out how you ever got one anybody, And
then once we started again, I changed it so that
they wind up together. The Oh that's so romantic. Yeah,
what a Nora? Did you say to Nora, let's rewrite
the end. Yeah, yeah, we rewrote Yeah, to go back
(07:17):
to La. And then I said to her, come out,
you'll come out and and visit, you know, And so
she came out to visit. I think it was around
Thanksgiving or something like that. I can't remember. But you know,
it's the weird thing where we talked every day, you know,
every day, we would talk, you know, every night. But
then there's a thing where you haven't seen it somebody
(07:37):
in like a month, you know, and your mind is
your image, you don't know what. The minute you walked
off the plane, I was that I was madly in
love because I know that's that person, that same person.
So that's when I was going to be Okay, it's lovely. Yeah,
How did you know he was the right one, because
I don't know, I just knew it just felt right.
(07:59):
I think we just fell in love right a way
and never looked, like I said, never looked back. And
I can't explain it. There's nothing in my history that
you know, showed I was going to have you know,
I had terrible relationships before that, and I was already
like three, three years old. You know, it wasn't looking
good for me. So I don't know. I can't explain it.
(08:19):
When you got married, you were married within seven months
of meeting each other, right, and then it just happened
on the spur of the moment because we went to
Hawaii just to go on vacation, and you know, we're
sitting there said you know, maybe we should just get
married here was like that. It was very spur of
the moment. It's a it was a really big I mean,
(08:40):
I had to move from New York to California, which
is that was the worst thing ever. We were standing
there in Hawaii and we say said, oh, okay, you know,
let's uh, maybe we'll do this, and of course then
I got a terrible stomach ache and drink a lot
of pepto bismol after that. But then we said, well,
what do you do? I mean, don't we need witnesses
(09:01):
or something? And as we're talking about witnesses, an elderly
woman in a motorized cart comes up and looks at
me and goes The Princess Pride was a delight from
start to finish. I said, you want to witness a wedding?
And she was there having a vacation with a friend
of hers from Liverpool, another old lady, and they stood
(09:22):
up for us on the beat, these two women. She
was a retired professor from Stanford. After you did that,
was there anything underneath that you still felt? I'm not
quite sure about. No. It's not to say they weren't
problems at the beginning, you know, you know, family stuff
and whatever that we had to go through. What didn't
(09:43):
work with the families, Well, she wasn't fully accepted. I mean,
I mean they family, yes, by my family, And why
was that you know, jealous? I don't know what it is.
I mean, you know, and I tried for like twenty
years to make it work. And it just did. My
father was never like that. Well, the Phil's mother was
(10:05):
a very nasty woman, and she was nasty to you.
She was nasty like around me. You know, she wouldn't
be mean to me. Would she'd say that she hated
my house? You know? Well, of course what I say
to Phil, I don't care, honest to God. And he
was sensitive enough to say, you know, did that hurt
(10:25):
your feelings? And I'd say it, really, it really didn't,
because I thought she was so mean to him, so critical.
Did that bother you that she would do that? Did
you feel, let me put it this way, did you
feel caught in the middle between your mother and Marlowe? No?
I was hurt a lot by my mother. Nothing I anybody,
(10:47):
especially her children. Nothing we said was ever validated, you know.
I mean you could say I'm I'm tired and my
mother would say we're all tired. That's like normally. Or
when he first got when they had the first induction
into the Television Hall of Fame and it was Walter
Cronkite and Lucille Ball and he was in that group
(11:08):
and he told his mother, you know, I'm getting this
induction into the Hall of Famous mothers as well, if
that's what they want to do. You know, it's like,
you know, there's never any kind of acknowledgment. I would say, though,
because the reason I asked that question because for years
I try to broker rock roche momp between you know,
my original family and now Michelle and all that, and
(11:31):
I just could never do it. I could never do it.
We'll have more after a quick break. We're back to
(11:52):
our conversation with Rob and Michelle Reiner. They've been together
for more than three decades, which is no small feat
in Hollywood, so we wanted to know some of their
biggest challenges as a couple. I would say it's, you know,
certain issues with the kids. I mean that, you know,
we have different ways of going about it. I mean
(12:13):
we try, we're on the same page a lot of times,
but a lot of times we have different approaches, and
that can be a source of you know, discipline, approaches,
discipline and yeah, those kind of things. I give you
the perfect example. I'm like the grandfather. When the boys
were a little they were like I don't know, four
and six before our daughter was born. I said, we
(12:33):
really need to make, you know, teach them how to
make a bed and are all of a sudden, Jake goes,
but Daddy, you don't make your bed, and Rob went.
You know, He's right, all right, that's it. That was
that's the discipline history of this household, right, And even
the kids complain that there's there aren't enough boundarieson that
they weren't disciplined enough. And that's something that I got
(12:54):
from my parents. My parents didn't discipline me either. But
maybe you know, I didn't act out or whatever. I mean,
I don't know what it was, but I never got disciplined,
really no, And so you just don't understand how why
light needed. No. You got your kids, You love your kids,
and you know hopefully they do the right thing. Are
you are your boy slabs? No? No, they're not. Really.
(13:17):
My husband is a slab. You know. It's amazing still
to this day, Oh yeah, to this day, the towel
doesn't get picked up off the floor. I'm better at that.
I mean I was, I'm pretty neat. But she said,
she said to me, put the towel back, fold it back,
and put it on the thing. So I do that, right,
(13:38):
I mean, the little things. Well, his parents would come
into the house, never say hello, never say goodbye. I
had to teach him how to say hello, how to
go and goodbye. I had to teach him how to tip.
I mean, all right, tip a lot, but how you do?
Sometimes I forget. I mean, you know, she basically helped
raise me. That's such a nice thing to say she did.
She did. So. So how do you fight? When you fight? How?
(14:01):
How very loud? Loud? Very loud? Yeah, too loud. Jews
that can go because a big it is a big
important thing. When people say, well, we never fight, I go, oh, well,
then you're probably so repressed, yeah, and probably not have
a good marriage, right because you do fight. I mean
that's what happens. We don't fight a lot, but we do.
(14:25):
So when you fight, you both screaming yeah, yeah, there's
a there's a quick escalation. You know, it goes from
zero sixty year very quick. And who makes up? I
think it's it's probably even I would think, don't you think.
But we get through it. Usually I walk out of
(14:46):
the room. I'll walk out of the room. That's the
big complaint. So that's how I go cool off. And
then I come back in and you're saying, there's no
way you could like if if I'm set off, there's
no way to know. Once I'm set off, that's it.
I mean, then I feel horrible afterwards. And then what
happens to me is I feel like I don't want
(15:09):
want to not be with this person. I can't. That's
a horrible thought, you know. So sometimes I have crossed
the line. It's a horrible thing because you can't unring
the bell, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
All you can do is say how much you love
somebody and be sorry that that you did what you did.
(15:29):
And that's another misnomer. Love is never having to say
you're sorry. Bullshit is always having to say you're sorry
if you are right when you say you crossed the line.
Do you ever throw out the divorce word? Um? No,
I mean she will say, what do you want a divorce?
(15:49):
She'll say that, right, you know, to stop you from
being crazy? Yeah? Yeah, And then I'll go, I'm not
saying that right now, but that's good. Yeah. Yeah, that's emotion,
that's fashion, that's that's that's alive. We wake up at
three in the morning and start yelling about but assassin. Yeah,
(16:09):
we're both obsessed with the Kennedy assassination for over fifty
years now. Yes, it was, no, no, it was. I mean,
we've done a lot of reasons. We actually had a
project that we're trying to you know, put together, you know,
but we'll get up at three o'clock and the more no,
wait a minute, the entrance fool, wasn't you know, the
grassy and we're we're into it, you know, at three
(16:31):
in the morning, go to sleep. Well you have no no,
wait a minute, I'm thinking about that. Couldn't that shot
couldn't have come from the book depositors. Yeah, yeah, we
have a lot of that. And it's interesting because you know,
we've worked on political things together. We have very similar
exactly the same political take on things. And she's more
(16:53):
the driving force than me. I mean, she is, she's what,
she's an irate citizen. Basically, there's just too much injustice
in the world and she wants to fix it all.
And you know, I'm you know, we work together. We
try to find the things we can actually work on.
But but that's where we've always worked very closely together.
(17:16):
Where there was marriage equality, which we saw, you know,
we start start the first yeah, the first yeah, the
first federal lawsuit on that, or on early childhood where
we passed some legislation here in California to start investment
in early childhood. We stopped a city from being built
in the Santa Monica Mountains. You know, we've done a
(17:38):
lot of different things, so that's the thing that we
always we worked well together. I'm impressed with how self
aware you both are. A lot of therapy, lots and
lots of therapy. Really, that's oh yeah, together, We've done
some together. But mostly what I think is that you
(17:59):
each person has their problems and their issues, their neurosis
that they bring to the marriage, and the only way
you can improve things is to identify your own you know,
work your side of the street. But then ultimately it's
up to each of us to work on that so
that we don't bother each other as much about you know,
(18:22):
it's not going to be no bother, but it'll be hopefully,
you know, tempered a little bit. This is a weird thing.
I don't know what it is, but it's like, there
are a lot of things that bother me about him,
and I'm sure if vice versa right, but somehow we
put up with each other. If it was just a girlfriend.
I go, I can't take this anymore, and not for this.
You know, I don't know what that is. I don't
know what makes that work. But well, because I think
(18:45):
there's more things that you love about a person than
bothers you about a person. It's funny because I was
on the phone with my friend the other day and
we were in the city and we were talking about
the fact that her boyfriend and Rob it just it
doesn't matter what it is. You'll say, I just told
you that two minutes ago. We were just there five
(19:05):
minutes ago. What is it? And it's like the same
thing there there. My sister, first to its domestic, add
that it's like, you know, they can't remember the writer,
the producer, the thing, where when who wrote it up?
And anything like it's like, honey, we're the diapers, you know,
after the third kid. It's just you know what I mean,
It's constant like that. And she said, look, you just
have to let it go. And you know, don't just
(19:28):
know that that's what it's like. And I had just
texted him. I was coming from the Lorrie side. I said,
can you go ahead and get some coffee. I'll be
there in a couple of minutes and I walk into
the apartment. I go, did you get the coffee? And
goes no, I thought we were going together. It's just
it's not even it's just not paying attention. I guess
you just can't get mad about it anymore. Again, I
don't know how long have you been married? Thirty? Yeah? Yeah,
(19:51):
that's a lot. Yeah, that's really a lot. This happens
on a daily basis. Yeah, right. I hate to be
the person has to edit this. It's fun, it's really fun.
We've enjoyed it. It's we're learning a lot. Every time
we walk away from a couple weeks say we should
(20:11):
do that, that's a really good thing, or let's never
do like, why did you learn tell me something? Well,
I had to work on something, which is I am
a fixer. I want to make everything better, right, even
if you don't want me to write, So Phil will
tell me something. We took this took years, I mean
(20:33):
maybe fifteen of our forty years for him to say
to me, I'm going to tell you something now. And
I don't want you to say anything, and I don't
want you to reach for the phone. Just listen to me.
I need to tell you this. He just wants you
to hear what want says. He wants you to hear that,
and he doesn't ask you anything except to just listen
(20:56):
to what I am. I don't want any advice, and
I don't want you to call anybody. I don't want
you to do anything. I just want to unload this.
And that was that's extremely hard for me. I mean,
you know, your impulse is to make things better for him, right,
And what you have to get to the point is
that doing that doesn't necessarily make it better for you.
(21:20):
That what will make it better for him is for
you not to do exactly. And that's a that's a
that's counterintuitive in a way, in a way, that's accommodation.
I think we accommodate all all the time because I
know that he's very different than me in a lot
of ways, you know, And I think he can sit
on the couch all day and not move and I
have to move constantly and keep doing things and be
(21:41):
busy all the time. And that's what I like to do.
And we're like, well like that. Yeah, Milo walks into
my office, she starts fixing, I mean, putting this year
and putting this away and talking all the time about
something else. I mean, she really is a control freak
(22:01):
in that way. And I'm the I guess nanty irishman.
You know, I put something down, it's there for four
and a half, you know where it is there. I
know she likes to keep moving and keep doing. And
I live a lot in my head. I do live
a lot in my head and thinking about stuff. And
(22:23):
I can be comfortable sitting and just thinking about stuff
and that will come out in the work or you know,
there's a divot in the couch where he sits. Yeah, seriously,
that's amaze. But she's great because she sometimes you know,
like we go SOMETI she'll push me to go out
or whatever, and I'm always happy that I did. I
(22:44):
think part of it we let each other be, you
know what I mean. It's like, I think that has
a lot to do with it. So well, he's lumping
out on the couch, I'm running around, and he doesn't
never say come in here and sit with me. Where
you're going? What are you doing? He just lets me be.
Then I let him be, and we just there's sort
of a synchronicity, even though we're on opposite ends. Of things.
So right, that's a very comforting Yeah, I think I
(23:08):
think what you said it is a big deal. It's
it's you get a lot of You get a lot
of strength from the fact that somebody lets you be
who you are, right, I mean, that's part of it too.
You have to accept you accept the person. If you
love them, you're not You're not going to be them.
They're not you. You have to accept them, and if
(23:31):
you can, that makes another person feel better, right, just
the fact that you accept them to be whatever they're
they're doing. Right. Yeah. There's also a certain kind of
ethic values that he comes with, you know, being raised Jewish,
I mean not religious, but the Jewish ethics of things,
you know, and also you know, the study of the
(23:52):
questioning of things that talmudic you know, reasoning and logic
and all that. What do you think you get from
Rob that you don't get anywhere else. He's the nicest
person ever that my life. He's the smartest and very
talent you know. I can tell you from my standpoint,
(24:14):
I get strength as neurotic as we both are, and
we can be. I never worry that she will be
She'll be okay, I mean she may get upset, she
may get hysterical, she may get really upset about something,
But underneath, I know she'll be okay. She's going to
be okay, and that gives me strength. That's Robin Michelle Reiner,
(24:39):
and that's a solid marriage. They have their differences of styles,
but there's no question they are on the same team.
And what a fun time we had. Next time I'm
awake at three am, I think I'll give them a
call until next time. I'm filled on to you and
I'm Marlowe Thomas. If there was a young couple here,
I was about to be married, What have you learned
(25:00):
that you'd like to pass on? Find a best friend
that you can have sex with. That's a good idea,
and what about you? Father? Double Day as a production
of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by US and
produced by Sarah Lilly. Michael Bahari is associate producer. Musical
(25:23):
adaptations of It Had to Be You by Stellwagen, Simfinette,
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
(25:44):
Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluker. If
you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage last. Some couples you feel
(00:40):
like you could just sit around the table with forever.
Case in point, Rob and Michelle Reiner interesting, smart, and
very very funny. We visited Robin Michelle at their stunning
New England type home in Brentwood, California, where they've lived
for close to thirty years. Before them, it was owned
by Norman Lear, whose series All in the Family was
(01:04):
Rob's first real acting vehicle, and before that, Henry Fond
lived there. His beautiful rose garden still flowers there each year.
Rob's whole life is so steeped in classic Hollywood it
would have been impossible for me not to ask about
his famous father, Carl and his mom Mastelle. Your folks
(01:25):
were married for a long time, Yes, almost sixty five years.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, so that has to have an
influence on well, yeah, I mean, my mother said, And
this was when they had their sixtieth anniversary and they
asked her what the secret was, and she said, find
someone who can stand you, not somebody you can put
(01:48):
up with somebody who can put up with you. And
I think that's the key when you see a role
model them. And I remember your parents very well. They
were in our house a lot and you and your
father loved your mother singing and he supported it. Him.
He was he was like her roadie. He really would
set up the music stand. He would you invite the friends.
(02:08):
He was like, he was like our manage. Yeah, and
we went and it was it was adorable. I just
had to love him for it. Yeah. And what about
your family? Well, your parents, did you have come from
a strong marriage? You know, but we're marriage really Well,
my mother was in Auschwitz and lost her entire family
and moved to the States, to Oklahoma of all places,
(02:30):
and then moved to New York and met my father.
They got married very very quickly, and it was not
a good marriage. So well, she must have had a
lot of scars. Yeah, I mean, my god, but not
not good role models. Yeah, and this is this your
first marriage? Yeah, so how did you get the courage
to do it? Um? The beginning didn't start around so
(02:54):
well because we were we were going to meet each
other and then it didn't happen. We have a good
story though of how it's a really good story. Well
because I, like I said, I've been single for ten
years and making a complete and utter mess of my
romantic life in and out of different relationships. And that
(03:18):
really became the basis for one Harry Matzali was the
whole idea of men and women and how do you know,
how do they get together in all this? And we're
in pre production and Barry Snenfeld was sitting there with
me and I look at this copy of Premier magazine
that's sitting on the table there, and there's a picture
on the cover of Michelle Pfeiffer, And I said, you know,
I heard she's getting divorced. You know, I had had
(03:40):
lunch with her like six months earlier on a professional thing,
nothing and yeah, lunch. And I said, you know, maybe
I'll give her a call. I don't you know, I'm
like grasping at straws. I don't know what the hell
I'm doing. So maybe I give her a call. And
Barry says, no, no, no, no, you're not going to
call her. He says, I've a friend in New Yorker
name as Michelle Singer. You're going to marry her. He
says that like that, and I said, who is She
(04:03):
says a friend of mine. She's a photographer, I know.
And I said, does she's smoke? That's all I said,
because Penny was a big smoker. She smoked like four
packs that I mean, she was I couldn't stand it around.
And he said yes, and I said, I don't want
to meet her. You know, she has a smoke thirty
years but at the time, she did smoke. And that
was that. And he came back to me and he said,
(04:25):
do you want to meet Rob Browner. I was like, okay, yeah,
And I mean I didn't have an opinion one way
or the other. And then he came back and he said,
you know, well he's not interested because you smoke her.
I was like, I fuck it, you know, I'm serious.
That that was that. So then months goes by, and
now we're going through the picture and we're about three
quarters away through shooting and I'm doing this scene on
(04:45):
the Upper West Side outdoors and I look over across
the street and I see Susan Barry's at that time girlfriend.
Now they're married, and I said, and there's a very
attractive woman standing with I said, who's that woman there
and says that that's Michelle Singer. I said, that's cheer smoker.
I said that one. I said, what's she doing? He says,
We're just going to go have lunch when we break
in five minutes, we're gonna go lunch. I said, okay,
(05:08):
maybe I'll join you. And I really I wormed myself
into lung worm my way in. And now we're sitting
at this place docks on the upper west side. Michelle
is sitting next to Nora Ephron and I hear over
there Michelle is saying, well, I can make better vishy
swas than this, you know whatever. And I'm thinking, Jesus, Jess,
what a bitch, you know. But I'm really attracted to her,
(05:30):
you know. And so we walk back to the set
and I could kind of chat her up a little
bit and talk and that, and then you know, she
goes and then I say, with Barry, ask her. Maybe
I'll ask her if she wants to go out. He says, okay.
So we make a date. We make a date to
go to Cafe Luxembourg because I was going to shoot
the next day on Monday. This was a Sunday. We
(05:51):
get there and wed seated, and the first thing she
says is, look, if this doesn't work out, I don't
want this to hurt your relationship with Barry, your friendship
with Barry. And I'm thinking we didn't even order drink,
so it's already not working out, and I'm sweating. I'm
so nervous. She's running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes
(06:12):
because she knows I don't want smoking, and she's going
to smoke over there, and back and forth like this.
So it was crazy. Anyway, we got through that, and
then we started seeing each other a little bit through it.
But it's like that he's shooting one night and they
finished shooting and I go, let's go to this bar
on Canal Street and we go to bar. He's forty
one years old. He's never had a drink in his life,
and he's never ordered a drink in a bar. He
(06:33):
didn't know what to order, and I'm thinking, what am I?
What's going on here? You know? So he ordered a
port I don't know. I don't know what it is.
I mean, I've been to bars, but I don't drink,
you know, so anybody. So then after that, it just
I don't know, it just clicked and we never looked back.
I mean seriously, I never had any downs about it.
But also you change at the end of the movie.
(06:53):
I did because in the way we had it, initially
it was going to be just they were never going
to get together. They were going to see each other
and then go their separate ways. And then because I
couldn't figure out how you ever got one anybody, And
then once we started again, I changed it so that
they wind up together. The Oh that's so romantic. Yeah,
what a Nora? Did you say to Nora, let's rewrite
the end. Yeah, yeah, we rewrote Yeah, to go back
(07:17):
to La. And then I said to her, come out,
you'll come out and and visit, you know, And so
she came out to visit. I think it was around
Thanksgiving or something like that. I can't remember. But you know,
it's the weird thing where we talked every day, you know,
every day, we would talk, you know, every night. But
then there's a thing where you haven't seen it somebody
(07:37):
in like a month, you know, and your mind is
your image, you don't know what. The minute you walked
off the plane, I was that I was madly in
love because I know that's that person, that same person.
So that's when I was going to be Okay, it's lovely. Yeah,
How did you know he was the right one, because
I don't know, I just knew it just felt right.
(07:59):
I think we just fell in love right a way
and never looked, like I said, never looked back. And
I can't explain it. There's nothing in my history that
you know, showed I was going to have you know,
I had terrible relationships before that, and I was already
like three, three years old. You know, it wasn't looking
good for me. So I don't know. I can't explain it.
(08:19):
When you got married, you were married within seven months
of meeting each other, right, and then it just happened
on the spur of the moment because we went to
Hawaii just to go on vacation, and you know, we're
sitting there said you know, maybe we should just get
married here was like that. It was very spur of
the moment. It's a it was a really big I mean,
(08:40):
I had to move from New York to California, which
is that was the worst thing ever. We were standing
there in Hawaii and we say said, oh, okay, you know,
let's uh, maybe we'll do this, and of course then
I got a terrible stomach ache and drink a lot
of pepto bismol after that. But then we said, well,
what do you do? I mean, don't we need witnesses
(09:01):
or something? And as we're talking about witnesses, an elderly
woman in a motorized cart comes up and looks at
me and goes The Princess Pride was a delight from
start to finish. I said, you want to witness a wedding?
And she was there having a vacation with a friend
of hers from Liverpool, another old lady, and they stood
(09:22):
up for us on the beat, these two women. She
was a retired professor from Stanford. After you did that,
was there anything underneath that you still felt? I'm not
quite sure about. No. It's not to say they weren't
problems at the beginning, you know, you know, family stuff
and whatever that we had to go through. What didn't
(09:43):
work with the families, Well, she wasn't fully accepted. I mean,
I mean they family, yes, by my family, And why
was that you know, jealous? I don't know what it is.
I mean, you know, and I tried for like twenty
years to make it work. And it just did. My
father was never like that. Well, the Phil's mother was
(10:05):
a very nasty woman, and she was nasty to you.
She was nasty like around me. You know, she wouldn't
be mean to me. Would she'd say that she hated
my house? You know? Well, of course what I say
to Phil, I don't care, honest to God. And he
was sensitive enough to say, you know, did that hurt
(10:25):
your feelings? And I'd say it, really, it really didn't,
because I thought she was so mean to him, so critical.
Did that bother you that she would do that? Did
you feel, let me put it this way, did you
feel caught in the middle between your mother and Marlowe? No?
I was hurt a lot by my mother. Nothing I anybody,
(10:47):
especially her children. Nothing we said was ever validated, you know.
I mean you could say I'm I'm tired and my
mother would say we're all tired. That's like normally. Or
when he first got when they had the first induction
into the Television Hall of Fame and it was Walter
Cronkite and Lucille Ball and he was in that group
(11:08):
and he told his mother, you know, I'm getting this
induction into the Hall of Famous mothers as well, if
that's what they want to do. You know, it's like,
you know, there's never any kind of acknowledgment. I would say, though,
because the reason I asked that question because for years
I try to broker rock roche momp between you know,
my original family and now Michelle and all that, and
(11:31):
I just could never do it. I could never do it.
We'll have more after a quick break. We're back to
(11:52):
our conversation with Rob and Michelle Reiner. They've been together
for more than three decades, which is no small feat
in Hollywood, so we wanted to know some of their
biggest challenges as a couple. I would say it's, you know,
certain issues with the kids. I mean that, you know,
we have different ways of going about it. I mean
(12:13):
we try, we're on the same page a lot of times,
but a lot of times we have different approaches, and
that can be a source of you know, discipline, approaches,
discipline and yeah, those kind of things. I give you
the perfect example. I'm like the grandfather. When the boys
were a little they were like I don't know, four
and six before our daughter was born. I said, we
(12:33):
really need to make, you know, teach them how to
make a bed and are all of a sudden, Jake goes,
but Daddy, you don't make your bed, and Rob went.
You know, He's right, all right, that's it. That was
that's the discipline history of this household, right, And even
the kids complain that there's there aren't enough boundarieson that
they weren't disciplined enough. And that's something that I got
(12:54):
from my parents. My parents didn't discipline me either. But
maybe you know, I didn't act out or whatever. I mean,
I don't know what it was, but I never got disciplined,
really no, And so you just don't understand how why
light needed. No. You got your kids, You love your kids,
and you know hopefully they do the right thing. Are
you are your boy slabs? No? No, they're not. Really.
(13:17):
My husband is a slab. You know. It's amazing still
to this day, Oh yeah, to this day, the towel
doesn't get picked up off the floor. I'm better at that.
I mean I was, I'm pretty neat. But she said,
she said to me, put the towel back, fold it back,
and put it on the thing. So I do that, right,
(13:38):
I mean, the little things. Well, his parents would come
into the house, never say hello, never say goodbye. I
had to teach him how to say hello, how to
go and goodbye. I had to teach him how to tip.
I mean, all right, tip a lot, but how you do?
Sometimes I forget. I mean, you know, she basically helped
raise me. That's such a nice thing to say she did.
She did. So. So how do you fight? When you fight? How?
(14:01):
How very loud? Loud? Very loud? Yeah, too loud. Jews
that can go because a big it is a big
important thing. When people say, well, we never fight, I go, oh, well,
then you're probably so repressed, yeah, and probably not have
a good marriage, right because you do fight. I mean
that's what happens. We don't fight a lot, but we do.
(14:25):
So when you fight, you both screaming yeah, yeah, there's
a there's a quick escalation. You know, it goes from
zero sixty year very quick. And who makes up? I
think it's it's probably even I would think, don't you think.
But we get through it. Usually I walk out of
(14:46):
the room. I'll walk out of the room. That's the
big complaint. So that's how I go cool off. And
then I come back in and you're saying, there's no
way you could like if if I'm set off, there's
no way to know. Once I'm set off, that's it.
I mean, then I feel horrible afterwards. And then what
happens to me is I feel like I don't want
(15:09):
want to not be with this person. I can't. That's
a horrible thought, you know. So sometimes I have crossed
the line. It's a horrible thing because you can't unring
the bell, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
All you can do is say how much you love
somebody and be sorry that that you did what you did.
(15:29):
And that's another misnomer. Love is never having to say
you're sorry. Bullshit is always having to say you're sorry
if you are right when you say you crossed the line.
Do you ever throw out the divorce word? Um? No,
I mean she will say, what do you want a divorce?
(15:49):
She'll say that, right, you know, to stop you from
being crazy? Yeah? Yeah, And then I'll go, I'm not
saying that right now, but that's good. Yeah. Yeah, that's emotion,
that's fashion, that's that's that's alive. We wake up at
three in the morning and start yelling about but assassin. Yeah,
(16:09):
we're both obsessed with the Kennedy assassination for over fifty
years now. Yes, it was, no, no, it was. I mean,
we've done a lot of reasons. We actually had a
project that we're trying to you know, put together, you know,
but we'll get up at three o'clock and the more no,
wait a minute, the entrance fool, wasn't you know, the
grassy and we're we're into it, you know, at three
(16:31):
in the morning, go to sleep. Well you have no no,
wait a minute, I'm thinking about that. Couldn't that shot
couldn't have come from the book depositors. Yeah, yeah, we
have a lot of that. And it's interesting because you know,
we've worked on political things together. We have very similar
exactly the same political take on things. And she's more
(16:53):
the driving force than me. I mean, she is, she's what,
she's an irate citizen. Basically, there's just too much injustice
in the world and she wants to fix it all.
And you know, I'm you know, we work together. We
try to find the things we can actually work on.
But but that's where we've always worked very closely together.
(17:16):
Where there was marriage equality, which we saw, you know,
we start start the first yeah, the first yeah, the
first federal lawsuit on that, or on early childhood where
we passed some legislation here in California to start investment
in early childhood. We stopped a city from being built
in the Santa Monica Mountains. You know, we've done a
(17:38):
lot of different things, so that's the thing that we
always we worked well together. I'm impressed with how self
aware you both are. A lot of therapy, lots and
lots of therapy. Really, that's oh yeah, together, We've done
some together. But mostly what I think is that you
(17:59):
each person has their problems and their issues, their neurosis
that they bring to the marriage, and the only way
you can improve things is to identify your own you know,
work your side of the street. But then ultimately it's
up to each of us to work on that so
that we don't bother each other as much about you know,
(18:22):
it's not going to be no bother, but it'll be hopefully,
you know, tempered a little bit. This is a weird thing.
I don't know what it is, but it's like, there
are a lot of things that bother me about him,
and I'm sure if vice versa right, but somehow we
put up with each other. If it was just a girlfriend.
I go, I can't take this anymore, and not for this.
You know, I don't know what that is. I don't
know what makes that work. But well, because I think
(18:45):
there's more things that you love about a person than
bothers you about a person. It's funny because I was
on the phone with my friend the other day and
we were in the city and we were talking about
the fact that her boyfriend and Rob it just it
doesn't matter what it is. You'll say, I just told
you that two minutes ago. We were just there five
(19:05):
minutes ago. What is it? And it's like the same
thing there there. My sister, first to its domestic, add
that it's like, you know, they can't remember the writer,
the producer, the thing, where when who wrote it up?
And anything like it's like, honey, we're the diapers, you know,
after the third kid. It's just you know what I mean,
It's constant like that. And she said, look, you just
have to let it go. And you know, don't just
(19:28):
know that that's what it's like. And I had just
texted him. I was coming from the Lorrie side. I said,
can you go ahead and get some coffee. I'll be
there in a couple of minutes and I walk into
the apartment. I go, did you get the coffee? And
goes no, I thought we were going together. It's just
it's not even it's just not paying attention. I guess
you just can't get mad about it anymore. Again, I
don't know how long have you been married? Thirty? Yeah? Yeah,
(19:51):
that's a lot. Yeah, that's really a lot. This happens
on a daily basis. Yeah, right. I hate to be
the person has to edit this. It's fun, it's really fun.
We've enjoyed it. It's we're learning a lot. Every time
we walk away from a couple weeks say we should
(20:11):
do that, that's a really good thing, or let's never
do like, why did you learn tell me something? Well,
I had to work on something, which is I am
a fixer. I want to make everything better, right, even
if you don't want me to write, So Phil will
tell me something. We took this took years, I mean
(20:33):
maybe fifteen of our forty years for him to say
to me, I'm going to tell you something now. And
I don't want you to say anything, and I don't
want you to reach for the phone. Just listen to me.
I need to tell you this. He just wants you
to hear what want says. He wants you to hear that,
and he doesn't ask you anything except to just listen
(20:56):
to what I am. I don't want any advice, and
I don't want you to call anybody. I don't want
you to do anything. I just want to unload this.
And that was that's extremely hard for me. I mean,
you know, your impulse is to make things better for him, right,
And what you have to get to the point is
that doing that doesn't necessarily make it better for you.
(21:20):
That what will make it better for him is for
you not to do exactly. And that's a that's a
that's counterintuitive in a way, in a way, that's accommodation.
I think we accommodate all all the time because I
know that he's very different than me in a lot
of ways, you know, And I think he can sit
on the couch all day and not move and I
have to move constantly and keep doing things and be
(21:41):
busy all the time. And that's what I like to do.
And we're like, well like that. Yeah, Milo walks into
my office, she starts fixing, I mean, putting this year
and putting this away and talking all the time about
something else. I mean, she really is a control freak
(22:01):
in that way. And I'm the I guess nanty irishman.
You know, I put something down, it's there for four
and a half, you know where it is there. I
know she likes to keep moving and keep doing. And
I live a lot in my head. I do live
a lot in my head and thinking about stuff. And
(22:23):
I can be comfortable sitting and just thinking about stuff
and that will come out in the work or you know,
there's a divot in the couch where he sits. Yeah, seriously,
that's amaze. But she's great because she sometimes you know,
like we go SOMETI she'll push me to go out
or whatever, and I'm always happy that I did. I
(22:44):
think part of it we let each other be, you
know what I mean. It's like, I think that has
a lot to do with it. So well, he's lumping
out on the couch, I'm running around, and he doesn't
never say come in here and sit with me. Where
you're going? What are you doing? He just lets me be.
Then I let him be, and we just there's sort
of a synchronicity, even though we're on opposite ends. Of things.
So right, that's a very comforting Yeah, I think I
(23:08):
think what you said it is a big deal. It's
it's you get a lot of You get a lot
of strength from the fact that somebody lets you be
who you are, right, I mean, that's part of it too.
You have to accept you accept the person. If you
love them, you're not You're not going to be them.
They're not you. You have to accept them, and if
(23:31):
you can, that makes another person feel better, right, just
the fact that you accept them to be whatever they're
they're doing. Right. Yeah. There's also a certain kind of
ethic values that he comes with, you know, being raised Jewish,
I mean not religious, but the Jewish ethics of things,
you know, and also you know, the study of the
(23:52):
questioning of things that talmudic you know, reasoning and logic
and all that. What do you think you get from
Rob that you don't get anywhere else. He's the nicest
person ever that my life. He's the smartest and very
talent you know. I can tell you from my standpoint,
(24:14):
I get strength as neurotic as we both are, and
we can be. I never worry that she will be
She'll be okay, I mean she may get upset, she
may get hysterical, she may get really upset about something,
But underneath, I know she'll be okay. She's going to
be okay, and that gives me strength. That's Robin Michelle Reiner,
(24:39):
and that's a solid marriage. They have their differences of styles,
but there's no question they are on the same team.
And what a fun time we had. Next time I'm
awake at three am, I think I'll give them a
call until next time. I'm filled on to you and
I'm Marlowe Thomas. If there was a young couple here,
I was about to be married, What have you learned
(25:00):
that you'd like to pass on? Find a best friend
that you can have sex with. That's a good idea,
and what about you? Father? Double Day as a production
of Pushkin Industries. The show was created by US and
produced by Sarah Lilly. Michael Bahari is associate producer. Musical
(25:23):
adaptations of It Had to Be You by Stellwagen, Simfinette,
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin. Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
(25:44):
Emily Rostek, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluker. If
you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening.
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