Jamie Lee Curtis has reflected on the emotional toll of honoring her late friends Rob and Michele Reiner at this year’s Emmy Awards.
Curtis, who had her wedding at the director’s house in 1984 and chose him as a godfather to her daughter, paid tribute to the couple during a memoriam segment at the ceremony in September.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Curtis said that she wanted to honor her friends at the ceremony but found it “a little tougher than I anticipated.”
She added: “It’s been a little strange because it’s a very private grief, and yet I’m a public-facing person. I’m trying to walk that line a little bit.”
Next month, Curtis will become the inaugural recipient of the Michele and Rob Reiner Champion for Change Award during the Children’s Institute’s Cape & Gown Gala. The honor was created in partnership with the Children’s Institute, its president and CEO Martine Singer (Michele’s sister), and the couple’s children, Jake and Romy Reiner.
Curtis explained: “I’m here for the Children’s Institute. I’m here to support their work. I’m going to be at the event to support the work that Rob and Michele did, and it shouldn’t be about me. And yet I’ve been the one talking a lot about them.”
Speaking at the Emmys in September, Curtis said onstage: “Last year we lost another cherished legend, our beloved ‘Meathead,’ Rob Reiner.”
“He was generous and kind and funny as hell and a friend to all.”
Curtis said in the interview that when she attended the rehearsal, the Simon & Garfunkel song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was playing.
“There’s an exercise in grief about desensitizing yourself, so I listened to that song for the next day, trying to get used to it,” she said. “It’s so moving to me naturally, and then it was sung live. It was very challenging because it was challenging enough to represent everyone and try to honor, in this case, particularly Rob’s passing, but I also have feelings of my own.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Curtis explained that she often admired the Reiners’ activism work.
“Every day with them was activism. They were enraged at the way the current administration had decimated progressive policies toward children, women, people of color, gay people and transgender people,” she said.
“I mean, don’t even get me started. Rob was a firebrand. I can talk a good game, and I’m a passionate advocate, but Rob had the acumen and the political savvy. I don’t have political savvy. He was able to find common ground with people he disagreed with and was a powerful leader,” she said.
The Reiners died in December 2025.
Their son Nick, 33, is due back in court next year in connection to the killing of his parents, who were found stabbed to death inside their Brentwood, Los Angeles, home on December 14.
