Corey Feldman’s doing a little cleanup — or maybe a soft backpedal — on those Johnny Depp comments … even saying he’d still be open to working with him.

We caught up with Corey at LAX Friday … and he tells TMZ he never meant to indicate Depp got him axed from the 1993 film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” — what he meant was that he landed the role, it got yanked, and then it ended up in the hands of a fresh-faced Leo DiCaprio.

Catch the clip … Corey tells us how he thinks the response to his comments was overhyped, and his take on the whole sliding doors vibe — like, does he ever wonder what coulda, woulda happened if he’d kept the role?

Corey’s cool, calm, and collected about it all now, which is a total 180 from that fiery podcast interview that aired in March — which he tells us was filmed a whole year ago.

Remember, he initially claimed Depp was responsible for the role getting swiped from him, and said he still hadn’t watched the movie to this very day ’cause he was still bitter.