Paul McCartney Calls Out Beatles Movies Because Paul Mescal Is Shorter Than John Lennon Actor; He Texted Director Sam Mendes: ‘Don’t Do This!’

Paul McCartney has a bone to pick with Sam Mendes, the director of the upcoming four Beatles movies starring Paul Mescal as McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. What’s the issue? It all comes down to how tall Mescal is compared to his co-stars.

“We were all the same height!” McCartney declared on the “Good Hang” podcast, noting how movies based on the Beatles wrongly depict him as shorter than his bandmates. “We were all the same height, and Ringo was a bit smaller. And if you look at photos, we’re all the same height.”

“Guess what?” McCartney added about Mescal. “He is smaller than the guy who plays John. Sam Mendes is making the film. I said, ‘Sam, I’ve got just one thing that I need to say to you. You know, Paul [Mescal is] a bit smaller.’ I don’t know how Sam’s gonna deal with it. He sent me a picture, a still from the filming they were doing, and they’re crossing the Abbey Road crossing, and the Paul character is markedly smaller. I texted him: ‘Sam! Smaller? Don’t do this! You said you wouldn’t do it.’”

McCartney also once expressed his frustration to Sam Taylor-Johnson, director of 2009’s “Nowhere Boy,” which starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a teenage John Lennon. Thomas Brodie-Sangster had a supporting role as McCartney in the biographical drama but is shorter than Taylor-Johnson.

“The John character, who she later married, Aaron — he’s bigger than me in the film,” McCartney said. “My character is kind of wimpy. Smaller than John. John knocks me to the floor. And it’s like, ‘Sam, this is not true!’ Her only explanation, bless her, because she’s still a good friend, she said, ‘This is a movie, it’s not a documentary.’ And I thought, ‘Well, I don’t like that explanation.’ But I couldn’t do anything, because by now she’d made the film. There was I, little Paul. John, the great big hero, and it’s like: No! It’s not true.”

Mendes is directing four Beatles movies, one centered on each of the band members. The project, officially titled “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event,” has the backing of Sony Pictures and is currently in the middle of its year-long production. All four movies will be released theatrically in April 2028.

“We want people to be able to experience them in the cinema at the same during the same period,” producer Pippa Harris recently said at the BFI London Film Festival, noting she does not expect audiences to “see all four films on the same day.”

“Within the same month — you might see one a week, or you might see one weekend and two the next and one the next. However you see it, I think our hope is that people will see all four films,” she added.

Watch McCartney’s full interview on “Good Hang” in the video below.