Paul Mescal, who as we set know is set to play Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes’ upcoming series of Beatles biopics, has been talking about his training for the role.
For a start - and as you might expect - he has been learning to play guitar and bass left-handed.
“It’s been pretty intense,” the actor said in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “It would just be crazy to not play it left-handed, you know? You’d be like, ‘Nah. I like [McCartney] a lot, but I don’t love him.’ That would be the messaging if I didn’t play left-handed. And he’s the fucking coolest man on planet Earth, I think.
“I’ve always been a massive admirer of his music generally, but the thing I’m in total admiration for is his work ethic, [which was] absolutely relentless. I think it’s just an objective fact that the work that he made has changed the world.”
As part of his preparation, Mescal met – and even played with - the man himself. “I will never forget it as long as I live,” he said. “That’s the coolest thing that my job has ever afforded me. I was kinda having an out of body experience, like [thinking] I was in drama school nine years ago and now I’m sitting here opposite Paul McCartney and we’re playing Blackbird. To be sat in front of somebody playing one of the most famous, most covered songs of all time. But then to be sat in front of the person who that came out of his mind, I was like, 'I love my job.'"
Then there’s the reading. Mescal has been busy absorbing Ian Leslie’s acclaimed book John & Paul: A Love Story In Song. “He reframes this whole relationship for me. We understand it as something that became incredibly antagonistic, which it was for a period, but also it was, to my mind, the greatest creative collaboration that we’ve maybe ever had as human beings - definitely in modern times.”
He is, he admits “obsessed” with the Beatles at the moment. “It’s part of my job, but it’s also the way that my brain is wired. I’m excited about listening to music, writing music, absorbing music, going to shows, all of these things - they start with an intensity with the job and then kind of become my personality for a bit.”
