Make Page Six a Preferred Source Paul McCartney isn’t happy with how his height is being depicted in Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-part Beatles biopic.
“We were all the same height, and Ringo [Starr] was a bit smaller,” McCartney said on the “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” podcast Wednesday. “And if you look at photos, we’re all the same height.”
The legendary musician explained that from the early glimpses of the films, Paul Mescal, who is playing him, appears “smaller” than Harris Dickinson, who is portraying the late John Lennon.
“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’s a bit smaller,'” McCartney, 84, shared on the podcast.
“I don’t know how Sam’s gonna deal with it,” he continued of the director. “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.’”
In his reply, Mendes, according to McCartney, insisted that the apparent height inaccuracy was merely from “the stride pattern.”
“And then he sent me another one where they’re equal,” McCartney said.
McCartney recalled being similarly frustrated with Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 2009 film “Nowhere Boy,” where Thomas Brodie-Sangster played McCartney, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson played Lennon.
“The John character, who she later married, Aaron — he’s bigger than me in the film,” McCartney explained to Poehler. “My character is kind of wimpy. Smaller than John. John knocks me to the floor. And it’s like, ‘Sam, this is not true!’”
McCartney said Sam’s “only explanation” for the size disparity at the time was that she was making a movie, and not a documentary.
“And I thought, ‘Mm. Well, I don’t like that explanation,'” McCartney remembered, noting he “couldn’t do anything” about it because the film was already completed.
“There was I, little Paul. John, the great big hero, and it’s like: ‘No! It’s not true,'” he added.
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Mendes’ “The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event” will feature four movies, each one centering on a different member of the beloved British rock band, all set to be released 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 IndieWire interview last year, Mescal confirmed he met McCartney to prepare for the biopic, and called the Grammy Award winner “an extraordinary man.”
“It’s a crazy sentence to say that I’ve spent time with that man, let alone play him,” the “Hamnet” star said, before confirming he “absolutely” will be doing his own singing.
In May, McCartney told the BBC that he taught Mescal how to play guitar.
“He came into this office and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll show him how to do Blackbird,'” McCartney shared. “So I picked up the guitar and started playing… and he played along exactly! I think he knew it better than I did!”
“It was amazing how studied and how well-educated he was about me. So, yeah, I thought, OK, I’ll leave you to it.”
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