Rob Reiner wins Emmy posthumously months after son was accused of killing him

Posthumous acting wins are rare enough at the Emmys that the last one came 31 years ago. Rob Reiner has now taken Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for The Bear at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, according to Deadline. The win arrived nine months after he and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were killed.

Presenter Wendi McLendon-Covey accepted the award for him at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The audience gave a standing ovation, and cameras found Jamie Lee Curtis, who was nominated for her own work on the show and had encouraged Reiner to take the part.

Reiner played Albert Schnurr, a restaurant consultant who mentors line cook Ebraheim, played by Edwin Lee Gibson, across three Season 4 episodes. Albert helped Ebra work out how to expand the Beef walk-up window into something bigger. His nomination came from the episode “Tonnato.”

He beat a record his own father set, in the same category his father won it in

This is Reiner’s third Emmy from eight career nominations, following wins in 1974 and 1978 for All in the Family. The 48-year gap between that second win and this one is now the longest between acting Emmy wins in the history of the awards.

The previous record belonged to Carl Reiner, his father, who won for Caesar’s Hour in 1958 and again for Mad About You in 1995, a 37-year span. Rob broke it by 11 years in the same guest-acting category. It is also the first posthumous acting Emmy since Raúl Juliá won for The Burning Season in 1995.

Season 5 had not been filmed when Reiner died, and the show’s writers kept Albert in the story without recasting or writing him out. Ebra speaks to him by phone twice across the final season, with only Ebra’s side audible. Other productions have gone the opposite way, as Wheel of Fortune is erasing its announcer from episodes already in the can.

The last of those calls closes the series. Ebra tells Albert the franchise plan is moving, asks if there is anything else he needs, listens, and says, “As you wish.” It’s important to note that the line is Westley’s from The Princess Bride, the 1987 film Reiner directed, which makes it a tribute rather than a coincidence.

His final onscreen appearance was not on The Bear at all. Reiner turned up as George Washington in a cameo on Larry David’s HBO series, which ran over the summer.

The criminal case behind all of this is still moving. Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found dead in their Brentwood home, and the county medical examiner attributed both deaths to multiple sharp force injuries. Their son Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested within a day.

A Los Angeles County grand jury returned an indictment that was unsealed in August, charging two counts of murder with special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and lying in wait, plus an allegation that he used a knife. He has pleaded not guilty and is held without bail. Prosecutors have said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

Reiner’s career ran from Michael “Meathead” Stivic to This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and A Few Good Men, and this award lands on the acting side where it started. The industry has spent the year marking losses of that scale, including the tributes for Tim Curry from his former co-stars.

The Bear’s final season will compete at next year’s ceremony, and Nick Reiner is due back in court for a pretrial hearing where a judge may set trial dates.