NEW YORK — John McEnroe’s son Kevin McEnroe identifies with Nick Renner — accused of murdering his parents, Rob and Michelle Renner — in a new essay that explores their respective struggles with drug addiction and growing up in the shadow of their famous parents.
Reiner, 32, faces life in prison without parole or even the death penalty if convicted in the horrific December 2025 killings of his 78-year-old director father and 70-year-old photographer mother. Nick was also reportedly diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and was released from conservatorship in 2021 that began the previous year.
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Kevin, 39, is the tennis star’s eldest son with Tatum O’Neal, who also found himself in the throes of substance abuse.
Little Bow centers on recovery — whether it’s “addiction, grief, loneliness, mental health, burnout,” and asked McEnroe to write an essay about “Being Charlie,” the semi-autobiographical 2015 film co-written by Nick Renner and directed by his father.
“As someone who comes from a well-established family, has a history of drug abuse, and is institutionalized, I can potentially offer … an attempt to identify with someone who has done something very, very wrong, and perhaps a way to understand how they did it,” McEnroe wrote. “Because compassion is what you do in recovery, and justified anger is not.”
Although McEnroe now holds a different view, he sympathizes with the film’s undercurrent, “a disdain for a life that you feel is not your choice… It’s hard to be anonymous as someone’s son.”
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McEnroe echoed Lehner’s own doubts about his family’s motives in getting him into treatment: whether to truly help him or to make his own life easier. Ultimately, McEnroe said he came to terms with who he and his family were, something he felt Nick never did in the movies or in real life.
“You can run from it, or you can embrace it; either way, you can’t care what people think,” he wrote. “Even if it’s not my choice, I can still choose it if I want to.”
