NEW YORK — John McEnroe’s son Kevin McEnroe identified with Nick Reiner — charged with murdering his parents Rob and Michele Reiner — in a new essay exploring their respective battles with addiction and growing up in the shadows of their famous parents.

Reiner, 32, is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, or even the death penalty, if convicted in the grisly December 2025 slaying of his director father, 78, and photographer mother, 70. Nick has also reportedly been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and in 2021 was released from a conservatorship initiated the year prior.

Kevin is the 39-year-old eldest child of the tennis star, from his marriage to Tatum O’Neal, who has also found herself in the throes of substance abuse.

The Small Bow, which centers on recovery — be it “addiction, grief, loneliness, mental health, burnout,” asked McEnroe to write his essay about “Being Charlie,” the semi-autobiographical 2015 film co-written by Nick Reiner and directed by his father.

“It’s possible, as someone who comes from a famous family, and who has a history of drug abuse and being institutionalized, that I could provide … an attempt to identify with someone who’s done something really, really wrong, and maybe a way to see how they got there,” wrote McEnroe. “Because compassion is what you do in recovery, and justified anger is not.”

Though he now holds a different view, McEnroe empathized with the movie’s undercurrent “of disdain for a life that you feel isn’t of your choosing. … It’s difficult to be anonymous as the son of someone.”

McEnroe identified too with Reiner’s own skepticism about his family’s motives to get him treatment: whether it was to genuinely help him or to make their own lives easier. Eventually, McEnroe said he came to terms with who he is and who his family is, which he feels Nick never got to — in the movie or real life.

“You can either run from it or embrace it; either way you can’t care what people think,” he wrote. “Even though this wasn’t my choice I still get to choose it, if I want to.”

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