Alan Arkin

Lore & Background

Nathan Rainer runs a modest but respected funeral home in Los Angeles, a business he built with his own hands and now expects his three children—David, Nate, and Claire—to inherit and sustain. He is a man of strong opinions, sharp tongue, and deep but often unspoken love. His relationship with his children is the engine of the show's first two seasons: David resents the business, Nate resents the expectations, and Claire resents the emotional distance. Nathan, in turn, resents feeling irrelevant and fears the business will dissolve without him.

His diagnosis with pancreatic cancer reshapes every dynamic in the Rainer household. Stripped of the authority that came from being the boss, Nathan is forced to confront what he actually is to his family when the title is removed. His final months and death become the show's most raw and unflinching exploration of how a family processes loss when the loss is the person who spent a lifetime preparing others for death. His passing does not resolve the family's conflicts; it reorganizes them, leaving a void that each child fills in a different, often destructive way.

In the broader mythology of Six Feet Under, Nathan represents the first generation to treat death as both a profession and a personal relationship. He believed in a certain dignity in the work—preparing the body, honoring the family, making the impossible moment as bearable as possible. That belief, imperfectly held, becomes the moral inheritance he leaves behind, whether his children choose to accept it or not.

In Their Own Story

The afternoon light through the funeral home windows turns the preparation room into something almost sacred. Nathan stands at the stainless-steel table, his hands—those restless, expressive hands—gently adjusting the jaw of a man who will never speak again. He murmurs something to the body, a small correction, a reassurance. David appears in the doorway, arms crossed, jaw tight. Nathan doesn't turn around. He finishes what he's doing, wipes his hands on his apron, and finally faces his son. The silence between them is not empty; it is full of twenty years of unsaid things. Nathan opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. What comes out is small, almost embarrassingly small: "You don't have to stay, kid. But I'm glad you're here." David's arms drop. He doesn't say anything. He just stays. And for the length of one long, golden afternoon, that is enough.

Reader's Guide

The creative decision to cast a performer known for broad physicality and comedic timing into a role defined by quiet, aching paternal love was a deliberate risk. Arkin's face could shift from wry humor to devastating vulnerability in a single beat, and the writers leaned into that range. Rather than making Nathan a stoic patriarch, the show gave him moments of absurdity, pettiness, and genuine warmth in rapid succession, which made his emotional breaks land harder because the audience had just seen him be funny.

This mattered because Six Feet Under refused to let any character become a symbol. Nathan was not "the father" in an abstract sense; he was a man who microwaved his lunch, argued with his wife, fumbled with technology, and sometimes said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Arkin's physicality—his constant fidgeting, his way of leaning into a conversation like he was about to tackle someone—gave the character a kinetic energy that kept him from becoming a static figure of authority. The audience experienced him as a body in space, not just a voice delivering lines about legacy and love.

The result shaped how viewers related to the show's central question: can a family survive the death of the person who held it together? Because Nathan felt so physically present, so stubbornly human, his absence in later seasons hit with a weight that a more abstract patriarch would not have carried. The audience mourned a man, not a role.

Did You Know?

• Alan Arkin had already built a career spanning Broadway, Off-Broadway, film, and television over several decades before taking on Nathan Rainer, bringing a depth of stage craft to the role that informed his physical, pre
• Arkin was well known for his distinctive, highly expressive physical comedy in films like The In-Laws and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, making his choice to play a character whose humor was often dry
• Nathan Rainer's cancer diagnosis and death served as the structural pivot for the entire series, reorganizing the family dynamics and setting the stage for the show's later exploration of how the remaining characters def
• Alan Arkin passed away in October 2023, and the Six Feet Under cast and crew publicly honored his memory, noting how his portrayal of Nathan had resonated with audiences navigating their own experiences of loss and famil