WORDS Bea Isaacson
If 2022 gave us Elvis, 2023 kind of gave us Elvis again via Priscilla, and 2025 gave us Bob Dylan, it was always a matter of when, not if, we’d get a Beatles film this decade. So when it was announced last year that Oscar-winning British director Sam Mendes was set to direct not just one, but four films about the Fab Four, no one was particularly surprised. Instead, it just thrust an age-old question right to the centre of public discourse: who would play who?
Beatles fans and cinephiles alike discussed dream casts with all the earnestness and imagination usually reserved for chat about the Glastonbury line-up. Finally revealed last week, the official cast listing is four of the most successful actors across the world stage right now; that’s Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
The announcement was met with excitement from many. Casting four current leading men – with Mescal, Dickinson and Keoghan household names of major critical and commercial credits – is thrilling for each individual’s fanbase, and the glamour of the big names suitably matched the buzz of the news. Discussing the April 1st timing of the announcement, Marie Claire declared if it was an April Fools prank, “[their] poor fragile hearts would be shattered.”
For others, however, it’s the casting that has us feeling fooled. It’s not difficult to see why – in a time of more conscious casting, in which moviemakers have gradually moved to casting actors that reflect the subjects of biopics’ backgrounds for a more sensitive depiction, the casting of Mescal and Keoghan from Ireland, and Dickinson and Quinn from London, comes across as outdated.
The effort is never really made for those from the North or the working class.
David Nagaj, actor
“I think it was Denzel Washington who spoke about how film-making, especially when talking about certain areas or certain groups of society, does depend upon a cultural aspect that is usually easiest told by those within the community,” David Nagaj, an actor and musician from Newcastle, tells me. While Nagaj thinks that the opportunity should be open to everyone, “the effort is never really made for those from the North or the working class.”
This feels especially poignant in light of this being a story about the Beatles, a band utterly entwined with the city of Liverpool. While Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ran away from their middle-class upbringings in Kent, the Beatles established Liverpool as not just part of their story, but a tenet of their songwriting, with iconic hits Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever highlighting their lasting love and nostalgia for the city. “The Beatles are so integral to our city’s history and the fact that not one of them is Scouse is actually insulting,” actor Elsa Newton says. From Liverpool herself, she explains that “we’re always put in such a stereotyped box and then when actual Scouse roles come along, they don’t actually cast us.”
Newton says it’s especially disappointing as typically, roles she auditions for that require a Liverpudlian accent “always seem to be very stereotyped roles” such as “the ‘chav’ or a lower-class type of character that is involved in some type of crime.”
“Liverpool is pouring with talent, but time and time again we are not given the opportunity,” she says. Newton isn’t alone in this opinion. On April 5th, John Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird shared that she was disappointed that no one from the city so synonymous with the band was represented in the casting, telling The Telegraph that “no one else can get that Liverpool intonation.”
While Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ran away from their middle-class upbringings in Kent, the Beatles established Liverpool as not just part of their story, but a tenet of their songwriting, with iconic hits Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever highlighting their lasting love and nostalgia for the city.
Beyond the significant absence of Liverpudlian representation across the casting, Newton points out that casting four men at the peak of their careers feels somewhat ironic given the story of the Beatles. One of the UK’s most famous rags-to-riches stories, their history is an American Dream narrative that saw four predominantly working-class school boys in post-war Liverpool become “bigger than Jesus,” to quote Lennon himself. “I understand the pull of big named actors and fair enough put a few of them in,” she says. “But give some undiscovered talent a go as well. An opportunity like this could skyrocket the career of a young lad who was once in the same position as the Beatles themselves. A working-class creative looking for someone to take a chance on them.”
George Osborne, a young English actor, agrees. “I am so thrilled to see that four of the most inspiring and undeniably skilled actors currently in the limelight are taking the roles of the Beatles,” he says. “However, there is a part of me that would’ve loved to have seen the platform to be given to up-and-coming actors that are seeking that breakthrough in an industry where many doors are already shut so tightly.”
Both Osborne and Nagaj are complimentary about the actors selected, but the former reasonably cites that “by casting unknowns, it would’ve given both audiences and Beatles fans the chance to fall in love with the raw energy of the Beatles as they did back in the day.” Instead, Mendes has, as Nagaj says, “played it safe” with the “flavours of the month”.
It’s not as if Sam Mendes is opposed to working with fresh talent. In another film about young English men – in admittedly wildly different circumstances – Mendes’ decision to cast relatively new, wait-what-was-he-in-again actors George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman as the lead roles in his 2019 war film 1917 were met with critical praise for both actors’ performances. Supported, but by no means outshone, by a wealth of British talent including Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott, the film grossed over $446 million in total, and went on to win three Oscars.
Casting new and previously undiscovered or underutilised actors is a move, when done successfully, generally celebrated across audiences. Just this year, Anora, a film starring absolutely no actors of considerable fame within the Western sphere, bulldozed through both the box office and awards circuit, and thrust its lead Mikey Madison into the stratosphere of celebrity. Similarly, Steven Spielberg’s decision to hold open auditions for the lead role of Maria in his 2021 adaption of West Side Story was met with acclaim and launched the career of Rachel Zegler, as well as her co-star Mike Faist, in both their first major movie roles. Playing across from Timothee Chalamet’s Dylan, Monica Barbaro’s turn as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown garnered her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at this year’s Oscars, an impressive feat for only her fifth film role. And within television, shows such as Bridgerton and The White Lotus have made bonafide household names of its formerly undiscovered leads.
An opportunity like this could skyrocket the career of a young lad who was once in the same position as the Beatles themselves: a working-class creative looking for someone to take a chance on them.
Elsa Newton, actor
As Nagaj, Newton and Osborne have discussed, it is utterly understandable, and undeniably alluring, to cast these big names to play what will presumably be the biggest cinematic event of 2028, its set release date. For we all like a familiar face, and even the most jaded of us have a few favourite actors that make us immediately sit up and ogle over a trailer shared on social media with keen interest.
That being said, this casting choice truly feels like a missed opportunity. As an audience, we are not only comfortable with but, more often than assumed, eager to let directors and cinematographers cast fresh talent and new writing compel us. Not only that, but this is a multi-film saga about the biggest band in history, helmed by a director so celebrated he is something of a household name himself. Are the casting directors of the films worried the public won’t want to watch unless it’s studded with A-List names? Should we prepare for the next casting announcement to declare Jacob Elordi as Brian Epstein; will Sydney Sweeney play Patti Boyd?
This is a multi-film saga about the biggest band in history, helmed by a director so celebrated he is something of a household name himself. Are the casting directors of the films worried the public won’t want to watch unless it’s studded with A-List names? Should we prepare for the next casting announcement to declare Jacob Elordi as Brian Epstein; will Sydney Sweeney play Patti Boyd?
Sixty years on from 1965 – the last year the Beatles ever toured, the year they released Yesterday and their Rubber Soul album – there is no shortage of acting and music talent born and bred in the United Kingdom, least of all across the North and within working-class communities. In a time of a well-recorded, often spoken about yet still jarringly unresolved decline in arts funding and opportunities, Sam Fender’s recent The Sunday Times interview comes to mind, as does Myles Smith’s acceptance speech at the BRIT Awards earlier this year – Mendes’ seeming snub of young, fresh, and Scouse talent feels boring at best, and a lack of confidence in the next generation of English talent at worst.
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