McCartney Says He Texted Mendes Over Beatles Film Height Gap

Paul McCartney said he texted director Sam Mendes to complain that Paul Mescal appears smaller than Harris Dickinson in an image recreating Abbey Road for Mendes's Beatles films, according to screenrant.com. McCartney made the comments on Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast in October 2026.

McCartney said the Beatles were roughly the same height, with drummer Ringo Starr a little shorter, and objected to the image in which Mescal, who plays him, appears smaller than Dickinson, who plays John Lennon. He said he asked Mendes not to make his character smaller, adding that Mendes had promised not to.

Mendes reportedly attributed the difference to the actors' stride patterns and sent another image in which the band was more evenly matched.

The films are being made as The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, with Sony Pictures and the backing of Apple Corps, the surviving Beatles and the Lennon and Harrison families. Each film is told from a different Beatle's perspective, with Barry Keoghan as Starr and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and all four are scheduled for theatrical release in April 2028 within the same month.

It is not the first time McCartney has raised a complaint about his on-screen portrayal. In 2009, he objected to a scene in Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy, which cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Lennon and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as a teenage McCartney, in which Lennon knocks his character to the floor. Taylor-Wood reportedly replied that it was a movie, not a documentary.