Matt Damon Attempts To Explain Effie Brown Confrontation

Matt Damon has once again addressed the controversial remarks he made about race on his HBO series Project Greenlight. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Damon admitted to having "blown it" by not including a more varied pool of contestants on the show. Back in September, The Martian actor sparred with producer Effie Brown, who is Black, during a conversation about diversity. "When we're talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show," Damon said to Brown in the episode. The exchange came during a discussion about whether to hire a white male director, or Brown's choice of a white woman and a Vietnamese-American man. Damon explained to the Times that when the final list of directors reached the show's judges, 17 of the 20 applicants were white men, which didn't help the decision process. "By the time we arrived to do our judging, we knew we had blown it, so Ben [Affleck] and I were already frustrated and upset about that," Damon told the Times. "So when Effie brought it up, it was like, yes, okay, we got it." Damon went on to explain his concern that by choosing a white woman and an Asian-American man, the judges would be focusing on "casting a reality show," i.e. the appearance of diversity on Project Greenlight itself.

Not everyone is buying Damon's apology, though — especially since it comes ahead of announcements about whether Damon will be nominated for an Oscar for his performance in The Martian. Notably absent from the interview is anything about his plans to encourage a wider array of viewpoints behind the camera in the future.