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Paul McCartney is worried about getting the short end of the stick with the upcoming Beatles films.
Director Sam Mendes’s highly anticipated four-part biopic of the iconic British band — one for each member —is slated for an April 2028 release. The movies will star Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan as McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, respectively.
McCartney, 84, has shown his support for the project and granted full music rights for the films — but he recently admitted on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast that he has a “thing” about how his height is shown in Beatles movies.
The legendary singer-songwriter told Poehler during Tuesday’s episode that although he was the same height as Lennon and Harrison, with Starr slightly shorter, he has been portrayed in several adaptations of the band as being shorter than his bandmates.
“And guess what? [Mescal] is smaller than the guy who plays John,” McCartney said on the podcast, prompting Poehler and her producers to burst into laugher. “I said, ‘Sam, I’ve got just one thing that I need to say to you. Paul’s a bit smaller.”
Paul McCartney has signed off on the Beatles biopics — but he is hung up on one specific detail (Good Hang with Amy Poehler)
Mescal is five feet and 11 inches tall, while Dickinson is six feet and two inches tall. “I don’t know how Sam’s going to deal with it,” McCartney quipped.
He went on to say that Mendes had sent him a still from set on the day that the four actors were crossing Abbey Road to recreate the Beatles’ iconic album cover.
McCartney noted: “And the Paul character is markedly smaller.”
“And you can’t put lifts on bare feet,” Poehler added.
Paul Mescal is playing McCartney in Sam Mendes’ biopic (PA)
The Wings frontman said that his concerns about his height first came about when he was watching Sam Taylor-Johnson’s 2009 film Nowhere Boy. In the movie, Lennon is played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (five feet and 11 inches tall), while McCartney was portrayed by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who is five feet and ten inches tall.
“My character is kind of wimpy, smaller than John,” McCartney recalled. “John knocks me to the floor. I was like, ‘Sam, this is not true.’
“And her only explanation — bless her, because she’s still a good friend — she said, ‘This is a movie, not a documentary,’” he recalled, adding that he was not happy with that excuse.
“I thought hmm… well I don’t like that explanation,” McCartney said. “But I couldn’t do anything because by now she had made the film. There was I, little Paul. John, the great big hero. I was like no, it’s not true!”