Paul McCartney is unhappy with the way his height is portrayed in Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-part Beatles biopic.
“We were all the same height and Ringo (Starr) was a little bit shorter,” McCartney said on the “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” podcast Wednesday. “And if you look at the photos, we’re all the same height.”
The legendary musician explained that from the first glimpses of the films, Paul Mescal, who plays him, appears “smaller” than Harris Dickinson, who plays the late John Lennon.
“Sam Mendes is directing the film. I said, ‘Sam, I just have one thing to tell you. You know, Paul is a little smaller,'” McCartney, 84, explained on the podcast.
“I don’t know how Sam is going to handle this,” he continued of the director. “He sent me a picture, a picture from the shoot they were doing, and they’re walking across the Abbey Road crossing, and Paul’s character is significantly smaller. I texted him, ‘Sam! Smaller? Don’t do that! You said you wouldn’t.'”
In his response, Mendes, according to McCartney, insisted that the apparent pitch inaccuracy was simply due to “the stride pattern.”
“And then he sent me another one where they’re equal,” McCartney said.
McCartney remembers being equally frustrated by Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 2009 film “Nowhere Boy,” in which Thomas Brodie-Sangster played McCartney and Aaron Taylor-Johnson played Lennon.
“John’s character, who she later married, Aaron, is taller than me in the movie,” McCartney explained to Poehler. “My character is kind of lame. Shorter than John. John throws me to the ground. And it’s like, ‘Sam, that’s not true!'”
McCartney said Sam’s “only explanation” for the size disparity at the time was that she was making a film and not a documentary.
“And I was like, ‘Mm. Well, I don’t like that explanation,'” McCartney recalled, noting that he “couldn’t do anything” because the film was already finished.
“There was me, little Paul. John, the big hero, and it’s like, ‘No! That’s not true,'” he added.
Mendes’ “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” will feature four films, each centering on a different member of the beloved British rock band, all scheduled for release in April 2028.
Mescal, 30, will play McCartney, Dickinson, 30, will play Lennon, Barry Keoghan will play Starr and Joseph Quinn will play George Harrison.
Other confirmed cast members include Saoirse Ronan as Linda McCartney, Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono, Harry Lloyd as George Martin and James Norton as Brian Epstein.
In an interview with IndieWire last year, Mescal confirmed meeting with McCartney to prepare for the biopic and called the Grammy Award winner “an extraordinary man.”
“It’s a crazy sentence to say I spent time with this man, let alone play him,” the “Hamnet” star said, before confirming he would “absolutely” sing.
In May, McCartney told the BBC that he had taught Mescal to play guitar.
“He walked into this office and I was like, ‘Well, I’ll show him how to do Blackbird,'” McCartney said. “So I picked up the guitar and started playing…and he played exactly the same! I think he knew it better than me!”
“It was amazing how studied and well-educated he was about me. So, yeah, I thought, OK, I’ll leave it to you.”
Gn entert
