Rita Wilson on How Rob and Michele Reiner ‘Made the World a Better Place’

Rita Wilson is an award-winning actor, producer and musician. Wilson appeared with filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner in “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Mixed Nuts”; he directed her in “North” and “The Story of Us.” Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer and film producer Michele Singer Reiner, died on Dec. 14.

Rob and Michele Reiner — Michele with one “l” — the French spelling, as she’d tell you.

Yes, there is the work we did together — the films will be there to experience over and over again. What can’t ever be experienced again is running into Rob and Michele in the neighborhood and having a great laugh, or having dinner where Michele insists on having only one conversation. Nights like Rob
and Michele inviting Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart and his dad, Carl Reiner, to show their favorite clips from “Your Show of Shows” and then talk about what it was like working together on that show. Or when they had “Bad Showbiz Night” parties, where you were invited to bring your worst showbiz moment and share it with a room full of luminaries, who also braved exposing their own.

Michele was a talented photographer who had a keen eye in her work and in her life. Her mother survived the Holocaust. Still, Michele found beauty every day. Rob made history in multiple ways through his work.
Both of them made a difference in their civic contributions and actions. They made the world a better place. They loved their kids. Each one. They did everything right. They loved. They were loved.

It’s hard to reconcile the goodness they offered to the world with this ending. It doesn’t make sense. But how they lived makes all the sense in the world.