Watch: Paul McCartney Reveals His One Issue With Paul Mescal’s Casting in the Beatles Biopics
Paul McCartney can’t let one element of the upcoming Beatles biopics be.
After Paul Mescal was announced to play the “Hey Jude” hitmaker in Sam Mendes’ forthcoming project The Beatles—A Four-Film Cinematic Event, McCartney admitted he had one qualm with the casting.
“I said, ‘Sam, I’ve got just one thing that I need to say to you. You know, Paul’s a bit small,’” McCartney told Amy Poehler on the Oct. 13 episode of her Good Hang podcast. “I texted him, ‘Sam! Smaller! Don’t do this, you said you wouldn’t do it!’”
Indeed, it was after the 84-year-old saw a photo of the cast—which also includes Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn as John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, respectively—recreating the band’s iconic cover for their 1969 album Abbey Road, which sees the musicians walking along a crosswalk, when McCartney realized the height difference.
Although the Skyfall director quickly set to ease the music icon’s fears.
“He said ‘No, it’s okay, it’s just the stride pattern,’” McCartney recalled of his conversation with Mendes. “He sent me another one where they were equal.”
Indeed, McCartney won’t stand for anything less than perfection when it comes to making it clear that his bandmates “were all the same height,” with Starr being the only exception standing “a bit smaller.”
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After all, the “Let It Be” singer shared he’s always had a “thing” about people getting that fact right.
In fact, he still remembers when his late BFF Lennon was portrayed as “bigger” than him in the 2009 film Nowhere Boy. (Aaron Taylor-Johnson played the “Imagine” singer while Thomas Brodie-Sangster was McCartney.)
“My character is kind of wimpy, smaller than John,” he quipped of the Sam Taylor-Johnson-directed film, which chronicles Lennon’s tumultuous teenage years in Liverpool. “John knocks me to the floor, and it’s like, ‘Sam, this is not true.’”
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“Her only explanation—bless her because she’s still a good friend—she said, ‘This is a movie, it’s not a documentary,’” he said. “I thought, ‘Well, I don’t like that explanation,’ but I couldn’t do anything because, by now, she’s made the film.”
For Mendes, the films, out April 2028, are a culmination of a lifetime of love for the band.
“The Beatles changed my understanding of music,” he told the CinemaCon 2025 audience, per People. “I’ve been trying to make a movie about them for years.”
But McCartney isn’t the only star saying what’s on his mind. Keep reading for more celebrity confessions…
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