Pattie Boyd has said no one involved with the upcoming Beatles biopics has approached her, despite casting an actor to play her.
Sam Mendes’ upcoming four-film series about the Fab Four are slated for a simultaneous release in April 2028. Set to star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, each film will tell the story of the band from a different member’s point of view.
Other actors set to star in the films include Saoirse Ronan, Anna Sawai, Mia McKenna-Bruce, and Aimee Lou Wood, who are playing Linda McCartney, Yoko Ono, Maureen Starkey, and Boyd, respectively, with Mendes calling all four women “fascinating and unique figures in their own right”.
Boyd first met Harrison on the set of 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, eventually marrying the guitarist in 1966 and divorcing him in 1977. Earlier this week, she appeared on the inaugural episode of Miss O’Dell: Abbey Road To Tulsa Time, a new podcast hosted by music industry heavyweight Chris O’Dell.
When she asked Boyd about the ambitious Beatles project, she said nobody had reached out. “Now,” she began, “I might be completely wrong, but I would have thought it would be polite to mention it to me or let me know that they got someone who’s going to be playing me.
“Don’t you think they’d let me know? Well, I haven’t been contacted by anyone. I could have really told them great stories. But I don’t think they want to know. I think they want to create something that’s completely different, like a different story.”
Boyd added that the forthcoming biopics seem to have “nothing to do with the truth [and] nothing to do with what really happened because they don’t want to talk to anyone who was there.” Instead, she said it was closer to “the filmmaker’s creation of what they think happened”.
She went on to say she wasn’t going to dwell on it, joking: “I’m going to be a very good girl and not get grumpy and growly. She did, however, throw a barb at Mendes (1917, Skyfall, American Beauty), quipping: “Somebody said he was famous. Apparently he’s famous, this man.”
Speaking to NME last November, Giles Martin – son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin – discussed his work on Mendes’ hotly anticipated films. “I’m working with the actors and they’re doing a really good job, that’s all I can say,” he told us.
“The scripts are really good and brave, as opposed to being anodyne. I’m on day two of shooting right now. They’re all really good actors so I wouldn’t advise them, but I give them nuances and share things I’ve heard.”
Back in January, fans got the first look at the four leads in character in a series of postcards that were left dotted around the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and many noted Mescal’s resemblance to McCartney when dressed up in the moptop hair and period clothing.
McCartney later playfully touched on Mescal’s aptness for the role. During his appearance on the last ever episode of The Late Show last week – in which he sang a duet of ‘Hello, Goodbye’ with host Stephen Colbert before switching off the lights for good at the Ed Sullivan Theatre – he was asked who was cuter out of the two of them.
McCartney simply grinned and pointed at himself. “Me,” he said.
After the crowd applauded, McCartney made clear that he was being tongue-in-cheek, adding: “No, he’s very cute, he’s very cute.”
Speaking about the films in January, Mescal said fans would “benefit from knowing as little as possible” about them before watching them. “I think the endeavour is totally singular,” he added. “On a personal level, I’m so thrilled to be working on something at this scale, but also rooted in performance with Sam and great writers.”