Billy Crystal Holds 1 Part of His Final Conversation With Rob Reiner in His ‘Heart’
Billy Crystal and the late Rob Reiner were friends for decades. They met in 1975, when Crystal appeared as a guest star on All in the Family. Crystal paid tribute to Rob and Michele Reiner after they were killed in their home in late 2025. He said he spoke to his longtime friend shortly before his death.
Billy Crystal recalled his final conversation with Rob Reiner
Reiner and Crystal both attended a Christmas party thrown by Conan O’Brien the night before the Reiners were murdered. Crystal said they spent their conversation reflecting on their careers.
“We had spent the night before together and talking about our careers together,” Crystal told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “We were talking about the movie business and how it’s changed, and how people don’t go to theaters like they used to. And we talked about the fact that you can’t control how a movie is going to do. What you can control is the experience of making it.”
Crystal said he has held onto some of Reiner’s last words.
“The experiences that we had together and that he had with the casts of his other movies were so extraordinary. He said, ‘That’s something you always have. Hits are great to have, but it’s the people that you hold on to,’” Crystal recalled. “I kept that in my heart.”
Billy Crystal said the phone calls in ‘When Harry Met Sally’ were inspired by him and Rob Reiner
Crystal said that he still wants to call Reiner and update him about his life.
“When something good happens, or ‘Isn’t that crazy?’ I want to pick up the phone and call and say, ‘Did you see?’ because that’s what we would do,” he said.
He said they frequently spoke on the phone. Their conversations even inspired part of 1989’s When Harry Met Sally.
“In Harry and Sally, there’s a lot of moments that Meg and I are really Rob and I,” Crystal admitted.
In one scene in the movie, Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) watch Casablanca together over the phone. Crystal said that this was something that really happened.
“He was going through a tough divorce from Penny Marshall at the time, and we were on the phone constantly,” he said. “And there were moments of, we’d be watching a movie together, like Casablanca, and we would do that and go back and forth.”
He paid tribute to his late friends at the Oscars
At the Oscars this year, Crystal spoke about his late friend during the In Memoriam segment.
“My friend Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes, because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be…far better in his eyes, far kinder, and far more human,” he said. “When Michele Singer entered his life, they were unstoppable. A gifted photographer, she not only produced films with Rob, but it was her energy that had them working tirelessly to fight social injustice in the country that they both loved.”
Nick Reiner is currently awaiting trial for the murder of his parents.
