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Given that Paul Mescal is set to play a young Paul McCartney in the upcoming Beatles biopics, the actor had a lot of homework to do before the cameras started rolling.
The prep process included learning to play left-handed for accuracy – task that afforded him a guitar lesson the Beatle himself. But it turns out that he’d toiled away for so long that by the time the pair met up, the master-apprentice dynamic had been flipped on its head.
“He came into this office, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll show him how to do Blackbird,’” McCartney tells the BBC. “So I picked up the guitar and started playing, and he played along exactly! I think he knew it better than I did!”
Acclaimed director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917, Jarhead) is spearheading four Beatles biopics, with each one focusing on a different Beatle and all releasing across 2028. It’s been reported that Mescal, who has already impressed GW with his guitar and vocal talents, is also singing his own vocals for the films.
He isn’t taking the gig lightly, and McCartney has recognized the work that’s gone on behind the scenes.
“It was amazing how studied and how well-educated he was about me,” the Beatle applauds. “So, thought, ‘OK, I’ll leave you to it.’”
McCartney, meanwhile, is set to release his latest solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, tomorrow (May 30). The music and memory of John Lennon was a key inspiration for the record, which looks to be a nostalgic late-career win for the legendary songwriter.
The Beatles films are set to drop amid a slew of music biopics, with an Ozzy film in the works, alongside the cinemized stories of B.B. King and Rosetta Tharpe.
These follow Greta Van Fleet starring in the recent Bruce Springsteen biopic, and Timothée Chalamet playing a score of top-of-the-line Gibsons while portraying Bob Dylan on the big screen – and the film’s producers had a clever way to make the guitars sound even more Dylan.
