As the Season 4 winner of Project Greenlight, Jason Mann was given the chance to direct his first feature film… but he was also given the label of “reality TV villain” in the process.

This season of HBO’s filmmaking reality competition has been all about Mann’s uncompromising approach to every aspect of making his directorial debut, The Leisure Class — and the squabbles that resulted with producer Effie Brown. But in a conversation with Yahoo TV, Mann says the tension between them wasn’t nearly as bad as the show makes it appear. (They just hung out together in New York!)

With the Greenlight season wrapping up this Sunday, we chat with Mann about how what we’ve seen on TV is only “maybe five percent” of what happened on set, how he and Effie are getting along these days, how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s faith in him encouraged him to keep fighting, and whether he’d sign up for the “Faustian bargain” of reality TV if he had the chance to do it over again.

First of all, how do you feel about your film The Leisure Class, now that it’s finished? Are you happy with the final product?

Yeah, I’m very happy with the final film. It was definitely the sort of thing where I had to just keep my head down and keep working away at actually making a good movie, while all the peripheral stuff was going on. But yeah, I’m really, really happy with it. And I can’t wait for everyone to see how great these actors are, especially Tom Bell and Ed Weeks. They’re really just tremendous together. The way they play off each other is really incredible to watch.

Related: Ken Tucker Reviews This Season of ‘Project Greenlight’

And then, how do you feel about how the show played out? Have you been watching?

Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s unfortunate to see that they’ve kind of taken what was, in my view, maybe five percent of what was really going on, which was dramatic, and they’ve made it look like that’s what was happening the whole time. So it kind of makes it look like the movie’s a disaster or something. [Laughs.] It’s very weird. It’s a bit of a Faustian bargain, to try to make more movies and kind of sacrifice that. But it’s cool that it gets people excited about the prospect of making movies. Obviously, I get tons of hateful messages. [Laughs.] But it’s nice to also have people excited about the movie.

So you feel like the show played up the conflict, and it wasn’t as contentious as they made it seem?

Definitely. And it makes sense. It’s completely understandable to shade everything away except the most contentious, most aggressive, combative dynamics. Especially between Effie and myself. I just saw Effie the other day in New York, and we hung out a little bit, and we were commiserating over the way the show has portrayed everything. It’s like, “Oh my God.”

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It did seem very tense between you and Effie at times. Was that not the case?

It was a little bit tense, in terms of: We both had different goals, somewhat, it seemed. Effie’s trying to do her job, and I’m trying to do my job, and sometimes it did feel like they were at odds. So there is a degree of reality there. But it certainly isn’t what is actually on the show. Because when you remove all the context of us being nice to each other, with all that stripped away, you’re only left with people seeming like they’re going to cut each other’s throats. [Laughs.]

It’s good to hear that you two can laugh about it together. Would you work with Effie again?

Um… I think she and I have very different tastes. And I also have producing partners that I have worked with in the past, who are kind of like my team, who weren’t allowed to be a part of this because there was already a full roster of producers involved with this. But you know, Effie and I get along, and I think she definitely knows how to maintain a budget. She’s very skilled in that regard.