Ben Mankiewicz OF TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES

With the passing of Robert Osborne, have you seen any significant change in your own hosting duties for Turner Classic Movies?

Robert hadn’t been on the air in a while, so to some extent, there may not be a significant change in the workload ... although with the (TCM Classic Film) Festival, it feels like there was. I have to say that it did change in January, though; I have a much more regular schedule for going to Atlanta (to tape movie introductions), which is much more regularly than I had been going.

It’s one thing to have Robert off the air and hoping – as he really was, until the end – to get back on, as was his goal. That’s why we never made an official announcement of anything. This is what Robert loved doing, and he wanted to continue doing it. And we’re not idiots: we wanted Robert to continue doing it.

How is the feeling of carrying his legacy forward while continuing to do your own TCM job?

There just feels like a ... the word I was going to use was “weight,” but it’s not bad, necessarily. There is an added responsibility, and you want to make sure you can follow this very wide path that he laid out. He set this up as a career and a way forward for me and for others to follow.

I think that without Robert, I don’t have this job. It’s not like he got it for me, but it wouldn’t be a job, a thing people did. He made it a thing people did, and that people appreciated and wanted, so there occasionally is a sense of overwhelming responsibility. Everybody associated with TCM is following in his footsteps, and as I’ve said many times, I think he left the place stronger and better-equipped to preserve and present these movies.