Entertainment

Several friends of the late Rob Reiner and Michele Singer are remembering the couple after they were found stabbed to death in their home in California on Sunday.

Billy Crystal and Janice Crystal, Albert Brooks and Kimberly Brooks, Martin Short, Alan Zweibel and Robin Zweibel, Larry David and Ashley Underwood, Marc Shaiman and Lou Mirabal, Barry Levinson and Diana Levinson, and Ambassador James Costos and Michael Smith shared a joint statement with The Associated Press on Tuesday, paying tribute to the couple, who were frequent collaborators and worked together on several iconic classic films, including When Harry Met Sally… and Misery.

The statement memorialized Rob Reiner as an unparalleled director who “was always at the top of his game.”

“Absorbing all he had learned from his father Carl (Reiner) and his mentor Norman Lear, Rob Reiner not only was a great comic actor, he became a master story teller,” it read. “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.”

“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,” the statement continued. “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.”

Rob Reiner and Singer were also remembered for their activism.

“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,” their friends wrote. “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. We were their friends, and we will miss them forever.”

The friends ended their statement with a quote from what they said was one of Rob Reiner’s favorite films.

“There is a line from one of Rob’s favorite films, 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?'” they wrote. “You have no idea.”

Rob Reiner and Singer were found dead with stab wounds on Sunday in their Los Angeles home.

The couple’s son Nick Reiner was taken into custody on Sunday night and has since been charged by the Los Angeles district attorney with two counts of first-degree murder in relation to his parents’ deaths. He is currently being held without bail.

If convicted, the 32-year-old could face the death penalty.

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Fans of The Muppet Show are getting their first look at the show’s upcoming special 50 years after its debut.

A teaser for the upcoming special was released Wednesday. It shows Kermit the Frog turning on the lights in the massive theater and setting down a coffee cup, before a title screen flashes Seth Rogen as the executive producer, and the February date of the special is revealed.

The special event will air on Feb. 4 on ABC and will stream on Disney+.

The highly anticipated special is executive produced by Seth Rogen and Sabrina Carpenter, and will feature Carpenter as a special guest, along with music, comedy and all the chaos Muppet fans have grown to adore from the crew of puppets.

All five seasons of the show, which aired from 1976 to 1981, are currently available to stream on Disney+.

The Muppet Show, which was created by Jim Henson, became a national sensation in part by welcoming some of the biggest names in entertainment to join the puppet ensemble of Kermit, Miss Piggy and more.

Some of the names that appeared as guests on the show were Elton John, Johnny Cash, Diana Ross and more.

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Actor Gil Gerard, best known for playing the title role in the sci-fi series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century has died, according to a Facebook post by his wife, Janet Gerard. He was 82.

“Early this morning Gil – my soulmate – lost his fight with a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” she wrote. “From the moment when we knew something was wrong to his death this morning was only days.”

She added, “No matter how many years I got to spend with him it would have ever been enough. Hold the ones you have tightly and love them fiercely.”

Janet also posted a message from Gil on his Facebook page that read, “My life has been an amazing journey. The opportunities I’ve had, the people I’ve met and the love I have given and received have made my 82 years on the planet deeply satisfying,” adding, “It’s been a great ride, but inevitably one that comes to a close as mine has.”

Finally, he offered, “Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t thrill you or bring you love. See you out somewhere in the cosmos.”

Gerard starred on NBC’s Buck Rogers from 1979 to 1981. The two-hour pilot of the series was originally released in theaters, before the network picked it up as a series. The show centered around an astronaut, William “Buck” Rogers, who gets frozen in space for over 500 years and is woken up in the year 2491.

His early career included a three-year stint on the NBC soap opera The Doctors.

Gerard was married five times; his third marriage was to actress Connie Sellecca. They were married from 1979 to 1987 and had one child together.

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The trailer for season 2 of The Artful Dodger has arrived. Hulu has released the official trailer for the new season of the Australian comedy-adventure series starring Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Thewlis and Maia Mitchell. The show returns on Feb. 10 …

Simu Liu is about to make his Broadway debut. The actor, known for his starring role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, will take to the stage on the Great White Way for the first time in the hit comedy Oh, Mary! Liu will play Mary’s Teacher in his upcoming run in the show, which is set for Feb. 3 to April 21 …

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Whitney Leavitt is set to make her feature film acting debut in an upcoming holiday rom-com. She made the announcement on her Instagram, telling fans, “Here’s your Christmas present…but you can’t open it till next year.” She also posted an Instagram Reel about all of the unsuccessful auditions she took part in that led her to this new holiday film, which has the working title All for Love …

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Dearest gentle reader, with the fourth season of Netflix’s romance series Bridgerton arriving in January, its showrunner, Jess Brownell, is sharing new details about what fans can expect.

Season 4 follows the love story between the second-oldest Bridgerton son, Benedict (Luke Thompson), as he falls for Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) through a Cinderella-inspired romance. Brownell told Entertainment Weekly there was a real effort to make such a classic trope feel complex and brand new.

“We start with a character trope that we’ve seen a million times before, which is a maid who falls for someone above her station,” Brownell said. “But I think a lot of times in these classic Cinderella-like stories, Cinderella is a bit of a damsel in distress. And, in the case of Sophie Baek, she is no such thing. We get to watch a very headstrong young woman try to decide her fate for herself and pick up the courage to believe in and dream for a life greater than the one she currently has.”

Brownell also notes that Benedict has spent the first three seasons as a bohemian who is uninterested in settling down. Season 4, she says, is a turn of events.

“We’ve watched three seasons of Benedict having a very good time and being good at everything, but unable to commit to any one thing,” Brownell said. “And I think, at the top of season 4, that’s worn a little thin for him. I think he senses that something is missing in his life — even if he isn’t ready to accept it — but once he meets the masked woman in the first episode, everything will change for him.”

The first batch of Bridgerton season 4 episodes will be available to stream on Jan. 29. Part two of the season drops on Feb. 26.

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Michelle Obama has shared that she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, had plans to see their longtime friends Rob Reiner and Michele Singer the night of their untimely deaths.

The couple were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Sunday, sources told ABC News.

The former first lady opened up about the pair during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday, taking a moment to pay her respects to the late filmmaker and his wife.

“We’ve known them for many, many years. And we were supposed to be seeing them that night, last night, and we got the news,” she said. “And let me just say this, unlike some people, Rob and Michele Reiner are some of the most decent, courageous people you ever want to know.”

She added, “They are not deranged or crazed.”

The former first lady’s comments came hours after President Donald Trump received backlash for his harsh remarks on social media about Rob Reiner’s death, which he claimed was “reportedly due to the anger he caused by others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction … known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

The president called Rob Reiner “a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star.”

Trump’s remarks have drawn criticism from politicians on both sides of the aisle, including New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican, who called the post “wrong”; fellow Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who called the post “inappropriate”; and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who wrote in a social media post that the president “knows no shame.”

In stark contrast to Trump’s remarks, Michelle Obama told Kimmel on Monday that Rob Reiner and his wife have always been “passionate people in a time when there’s not a lot of courage going on.”

“They were the kind of people who were ready to put their actions behind what they cared about. And they cared about their family. And they cared about this country. And they cared about fairness and equity. And that is the truth. I do know them,” she said.

Rob Reiner and Singer’s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, is accused of killing his parents and was taken into custody Sunday evening. He is currently being held without bail and has not yet been formally charged. The case against him is expected to be presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for filing consideration on Tuesday, according to police.

ABC News has reached out to the Reiner family for comment.

The ABC News special The Rob Reiner Story: A Hollywood Tragedy will air Tuesday on ABC at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT, and stream on Disney+ and Hulu.

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If you didn’t get to see Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in theaters, you’ll now have a new chance to see the film.

The movie about Bruce Springsteen’s efforts making his 1982 solo album, Nebraska, is set to hit digital platforms, including Amazon, Prime Video and Apple TV, on Dec. 23. It will also be released on 4K Blu-ray on Jan. 20, with the release including the four-act documentary Making Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.

The documentary’s four parts cover the process of adapting Warren Zanes’ 2023 book, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, for the big screen; a look at the album Nebraska; a deep dive into actor Jeremy Allen White’s process of becoming Springsteen for the film; and what it took to capture Springsteen’s New Jersey during the era of the movie.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper, opened in theaters in October.

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The title and official teaser trailer for Steven Spielberg‘s newest film have been released.

Universal Pictures announced Tuesday the movie will be called Disclosure Day. The studio also shared the film’s first trailer.

Disclosure Day, which returns Spielberg to his extraterrestrial roots, arrives in theaters on June 12, 2026.

Emily Blunt stars as a TV weather woman from Kansas City in the upcoming film. The trailer finds her unable to hold herself together while broadcasting live on air as she is seemingly possessed by something.

Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson and Colman Domingo also star in the thriller, which is based on a story by Spielberg.

“If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?” the film’s official logline asks. “This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to … Disclosure Day.”

David Koepp, the writer of Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, wrote the screenplay for this new movie.

“People keep wondering. Encountering the unknown. They are starved for the truth!” Domingo’s character says in the teaser.

Spielberg is the top-grossing director of all time. He previously explored stories about extraterrestrial life in the films E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and War of the Worlds.

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General Hospital actress Genie Francis is remembering her late co-star Anthony Geary, who died Sunday at the age of 78. Francis and Geary famously starred as Laura and Luke Spencer in the long-running soap opera for 37 years.

“Tony was a very warm person, very sensitive person, and incredibly funny,” Francis told ABC News. “I was very, very young and Tony was very protective of me. But we knew we were doing something very edgy.”

“[Television producer] Gloria Monty always said that we were going to change the face of daytime,” Francis continued. “And we were doing that. We were so excited. We didn’t want to leave when we were released. We’d sometimes sit on the stage and just talk about what we had done.”

Francis and Geary’s portrayal of the iconic couple earned both Daytime Emmy Awards and in 1981, when their characters married, about 30 million Americans tuned in to watch the wedding on General Hospital.

Geary opened up about his and Francis’ chemistry and success together in an interview with Good Morning America back in 2013.

“There are all kinds of successes but ours was different in that it was truly lightning in a bottle,” Geary said at the time. “It was the most unexpected place, a soap opera, which was about to be canceled, that took everyone’s interest and swept the nation. It’s a piece of history that I’m glad I took part in.”

Francis, now 63, said she will miss her longtime partner.

“I’m just heartbroken. I’m so sad,” said Francis. “But again, I am so lucky that I got to have this man as my first leading man. He ruined me. He ruined me for leading men for the rest of my life basically. Because I started with the best.”

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‘Tis the season, because Fallout season 2 premiered on Prime Video one day earlier than planned.

The first episode of season 2 of the popular show based on the hit video game franchise debuted on Tuesday. It was previously expected to release on Wednesday.

Walton Goggins stars as The Ghoul in Fallout, and he spoke with ABC Audio about what he’s most looking forward to fans seeing in season 2.

The actor said he’s “been in television for a very long time” and “been lucky to be in” the position of starring in an incredibly popular first season of a TV show before this.

“In season 2, you have an opportunity to do something really spectacular if you’re able to achieve it,” Goggins said. “The table is set for you to do something much deeper because the groundwork has already been laid. And I’m just excited for the audience to see how deep we go in season 2 for all of these characters and all of the relationships.”

Goggins is also excited for fans to see “the way in which this analog version of what at times can be a green screen world — how that’s not what we’ve leaned into.”

Instead, the actor wants viewers to see “that it’s tactile and it’s real and a lot of people put a lot care into it. So I can’t wait for people to see that.”

The actor also teases there are many video game Easter eggs in season 2, but that they “aren’t gratuitous.”

“They are weaved into the story because it’s organic to the story,” he continued. “One glaring example is the introduction of Robert House into this world, played by Justin Theroux, who happens to be a really good friend of mine in real life.” 

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