Less than 36 hours before their passing last month, Rob and Michele Reiner sat in a Los Angeles theater watching “Lyrics From Lockdown,” a one-man show exploring race, justice, and mass incarceration in America.
The show highlights Nanon Williams, who is serving his 34th year in a Texas prison for a murder he maintains he did not commit, and with whom, over the past decade, the Reiners quietly built a remarkable relationship.
Rob, a renowned director, and Michele, a photographer, producer, and activist, considered Williams, 51, like a son, emailing him almost daily. They had even invited him to live with them if he ever gained freedom. Their daughter, Romy, referred to Williams as her big brother.
“He became like family,” Romy said in a statement to NBC News.
Rob Reiner and Michele’s bond with Nanon Williams
The Reiners’ bond with Williams was based on ideals that animated much of Rob’s work, love, chosen family, compassion and redemption. After being charged with murder at 17, Williams had spent his entire adult life behind bars, much of it in near-total isolation.
The Reiners lived in a world defined by film premieres, public platforms and near-constant access to power. The connection they discovered was as profound as it was unlikely.
The Reiners were “an integral part of my life,” Williams told NBC News in an interview from prison last week. “They became a part of me.”
On the last Friday evening of the Reiners’ lives, December 12th, words that Williams wrote from prison about survival were read from a Los Angeles stage. Williams’ mother and sisters were in the audience, along with the woman he’d fallen in love with and married from prison. The Reiners were on a double date with their dear friends, Billy Crystal and his wife. Romy came, too.
In the theater that night, Rob spotted Williams’ sister, Angela Grant Clayton, and hugged her.
“We’re going to make sure Nanon gets out,” he told her.
Williams’ mother, Lee Diana Bolton, said Rob and Michele pulled her into a tight, lingering embrace.
“These were not phony people,” she said later. “These were the sweetest, most loving people that I have ever met.”
Following the show, the Reiners gathered with a small circle of advocates who had been pressing for Williams’ exoneration. Georgetown professor Marc Howard was one of them. Near the stage, they all discussed the latest developments in Williams’ appeal.
“It was a conversation so full of hope, happiness,” Howard said later. “It felt like the very next step was Nanon coming home.”
