Billy Crystal is looking back at his last conversation with longtime friend Rob Reiner before his death.

During a Tuesday (April 14) appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Crystal got emotional as he reflected on his final words with the beloved filmmaker the night before he and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were killed in December 2025, per E! News. The pair maintained a close friendship that spanned decades after first meeting in 1975 on All My Family and went on to work together on Reiner's films like When Harry Met Sally and The Princess Bride.

"We had spent the night before together talking about our careers together," he said, recalling their conversation at Conan O'Brien's Christmas Party. "We were talking about the movie business and how it's changed and how people don't go to theaters like they used to."

Crystal then shared some wise words from his friend about how you can't control how well a movie performs at the box office but you can lean into the experience of creating the film with the cast and crew.

"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. And the experiences that we had together and that he had with his casts of his other moves was so extraordinary that — he said, 'That's something you always have. Hits are great to have, but it's the people that you hold on to.'"

With that conversation "in my heart," Crystal paid tribute to his late friend during an emotional In Memoriam segment at the 98th Academy Awards in March, bringing out more than a dozen actors and actresses who starred in Reiner's films over the years.

"I said, 'If I could get the cast of those movies together, to walk out with me, that would have made him really smile,'" he said.

Crystal remembered Reiner as "hilarious, devoted [and] opinionated" and "an uncle to my kids" and described "so many moments" where Crystal wants to call him "because that's what we would do."

"It's a profound loss for, I'm just going to say, humanity," he said, "because he was the most human person that I ever met."

Rob and Michele Reiner were killed in their Los Angeles home on December 14, 2025, and their son Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection to their deaths. After pleading not guilty, he remains in custody without bail. His next scheduled court appearance is on April 29.

Craig Stevens