Paul Mescal Talks Meeting ‘Extraordinary Man’ Paul McCartney Before Playing Him

Paul Mescal won’t soon forget coming together with Paul McCartney.

The 29-year-old actor is set to play music legend McCartney, 83, in a set of upcoming Beatles biopics from director Sam Mendes.

Speaking with IndieWire, Mescal said that he and McCartney have now met in real life, calling the 19-time 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,” continued the History of Sound actor, adding that he will “absolutely” be doing his own singing as McCartney.

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Mescal’s participation as one-quarter of the Fab Four comes alongside Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.

During CinemaCon in Las Vegas earlier this year, Mendes, 60, described the films — collectively called The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event — the “first bingeable theatrical experience.” He added that filming will last a year.

The director also said The Beatles “changed” his “understanding of music,” and that he’d “been trying to make a movie about them for years.”

The British filmmaker’s four Beatles biopics, each told from the perspective of a different band member, mark the first time Apple Corps Ltd. and the group have granted the rights to their life stories and music for the big screen.

“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes said in a February 2024 statement announcing the project.

Mescal’s Gladiator II director Ridley Scott spilled the beans about the actor’s casting as McCartney, during a conversation with Christopher Nolan that followed a Gladiator II screening in Los Angeles in December 2024.

When Nolan, 55, asked if Mescal was set to star in Scott’s next film, the latter confirmed that while that was once the plan, Mescal’s busy schedule would interfere with the project.

“Paul is actually stacked up, doing the Beatles next. So I may have to let him go,” said Scott, 87, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

For now, Mescal has a busy release schedule that includes his upcoming films Hamnet and The History of Sound, the latter of which he premiered in New York City on Tuesday, Sept. 2.

“I love Lionel,” he told PEOPLE of his character in the film during the premiere. “He’s the longest I’ve lived with any character. I’ve waited five years to get to play him, and I’m so grateful that I did. I think he’s an extraordinary man.”

The History of Sound is in theaters Sept. 12, while the four Beatles films are currently slated for release in April 2028.