In what many initially thought was an April Fools’ Day joke, it was announced on Tuesday that Sam Mendes will direct a set of four biopics about the Beatles, starring Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.
“There had to be a way to tell the epic story for a new generation,” Mendes told the crowd at CinemaCon 2025 in Las Vegas of the ambitious project. “I can assure you there is still plenty left to explore, and I think we found a way to do that.”
It’s going to be a long and winding road to the release of The Beatles: A Four-Film Cinematic Event in April 2028, but while questions about the foursome’s ages, looks, and abilities to do a Scouse accent percolate across the web, another question has been burning through the Vogue group chat: Who will be our Yoko Ono? Our Barbara Bach? A young Stella McCartney?
The women in the Beatles’ universe played a major role in the group’s personal and musical journey: A constellation of girlfriends, wives, trysts, and exes influenced each band member, their songs, and the band’s direction. There were influential female relatives that propped them up, musicians the band championed in a male-dominated industry, photographers, and fellow artists. Plus, there was the Apple Scruffs—one of the most intense fandoms ever to exist.
Below, Vogue makes the case for who should play the women behind the Beatles.
Aimee Lou Wood as Pattie Boyd
There have already been rumors that The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood is primed to play the legendary model, photographer, muse, and ex-wife of George Harrison. Other social media users have suggested Mia Goth for the role too. Boyd herself has already responded to the news of the biopics: “I wonder who will be cast to play me? That’s assuming that I get to feature in any of the movies...” she wrote on X.
Well, of course Joseph Quinn’s George needs a Pattie. She was in the thick of it with the band in the ’60s and introduced them to the Eastern spirituality that became a hallmark of their music for a time. Harrison’s greatest love song, “Something,” is inspired by Boyd. Their love triangle, with Boyd caught between Harrison and guitarist Eric Clapton, is also one for the ages. Boyd’s life—from working as a shampoo girl at a beauty salon in London before being scouted as a model to working with photographers like David Bailey, socializing around the Swinging Sixties in Mary Quant miniskirts, and her one-liner part in A Hard Day’s Night—is primed for its own biopic. Her books Wonderful Tonight and Pattie Boyd: My Life in Pictures provide the perfect source material.
Given Wood’s wit and range, shown in roles from Sex Education to The White Lotus, she seems like the right Pattie for the job.
Kaia Gerber as Barbara Bach
Kaia already has the Bond-girl look, so who better to play Barbara Bach? Bach played Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me before meeting Ringer Starr on the set of the 1980 movie Caveman. They got married in London in 1981, just months after the death of John Lennon, and at their wedding McCartney played piano, Harrison the guitar, and Starr drummed on an upside-down ice bucket. They’ve been through it over the years, dealing with mobs of jealous fans and aggressive press attention, a near-death experience in a car crash, and entering rehab together in 1988. And with recent turns in Saturday Night, Bottoms, and the era-appropriate Palm Royale, Gerber could go toe to toe with Keoghan.
Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono
The Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning Japanese actor and singer Anna Sawai captured hearts and minds with her striking performance in Shōgun. (It made her the first actor of Asian descent to win best actress in a drama at the Emmys and the first Japanese woman to ever win an Emmy.) So surely she’s the shoo-in for the powerful, uncategorizable artist Yoko Ono, John Lennon’s partner. With the unfortunate accusation that she broke up the Beatles and her intense ties to Lennon’s emotional and creative trajectories, Ono’s role in the biopic will be major. Sawai’s emotional dexterity and deep character-study work feel right for the part.
Honor Swinton Byrne as Linda McCartney
Honor Swinton Byrne made her acclaimed debut in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir in 2019, balancing creative ambition, a doomed love affair, and delicate family dynamics in her role as film student Julie. It seems like Swinton Byrne, then, could make a compelling Linda McCartney—the photographer, musician, cookbook author, activist, and wife of Paul McCartney who passed away from breast cancer at just 56. Linda and Paul, who married in 1969, had a rather modern love story, navigating a turbulent relationship through the band’s stratospheric rise. Considering how Swinton Byrne performed opposite Tom Burke, the Linda-Paul dynamic would be electric.
Julia Garner as Maureen Starkey
She’d need a full hair transformation, but the Ozark and Inventing Anna actor Julia Garner has proved how chameleonic she can be, and she certainly possesses Maureen “Mo” Starkey’s frenetic spirit. Starkey is the Liverpudlian hairdresser who was Ringo Starr’s first wife, meeting him at the iconic Cavern Club where the band was playing. After the pair married in 1965, Starkey began a brief affair with George Harrison in 1972, and she and Starr divorced in 1975. She later died in 1994 following a battle with leukemia.
Jenna Ortega as Olivia Harrison
Jenna Ortega is a character driven actor, from her role as Wednesday Addams to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Scream, and Death of a Unicorn—so taking on the role of Olivia Harrison, a music-industry maven and Harrison’s widow, feels within her wheelhouse. In 1999, Olivia even saved her husband from a violent home invader!
Cailee Spaeny as Cynthia Lennon
As the star of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Cailee Spaeny glided effortlessly from the wide-eyed young Priscilla Beaulieu enamored by Elvis to a disillusioned and almost broken young woman. That feels right for whoever takes the role of Cynthia Lennon, the artist, author, and John Lennon’s first wife. The pair met in a calligraphy class at Liverpool College of Art, and Cynthia wrote two aching, gutsy memoirs—perfect for an actor to immerse herself in.
Lola Petticrew as Cilla Black
As Dolours Price in the excellent Say Nothing, Lola Petticrew was a compelling force, exploring Price’s emotional dimensions and electric relationship with her sister. (Later this year, they’ll star in the adaptation of the book Trespasses.) Petticrew would bring that dexterity to the cheeky, talented Cilla Black, the Scouse singer the Beatles championed early on.
Sadie Sink as Jane Asher
Acclaimed English actor and author Jane Asher was also famously Paul McCartney’s (very young) girlfriend from 1963 to 1968. McCartney wrote the songs “And I Love Her,” “We Can Work It Out,” and “You Won’t See Me,” among others, about her, and she accompanied the band to Rishikesh, India, in early 1968, where they took part in an advanced transcendental-meditation training session with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Asher and McCartney called off their engagement in 1968. Sadie Sink, with her similar experience as a very young and accomplished actor across film, television, and theater, could bring that breadth to Asher.
Kiernan Shipka as Stella McCartney
Depending on the chronology of these biopics and how much time hopping we’ll be doing, a young Stella McCartney could readily be found in McCartney muse Kiernan Shipka.
Esther Rose McGregor as Astrid Kirchherr
The Babygirl star and model for Celine and Miu Miu (and daughter of Ewan McGregor) has long orbited the world of celebrity and so could find the rhythm of a photographer who traced the Beatles’ stratospheric rise with her lens. McGregor has a quiet confidence that could be a good match for Kirchherr’s assured sensibility.
Zendaya as Ronnie Spector
Okay, cheating here a little, as Zendaya has already been cast as Ronnie Spector in Barry Jenkins’s biopic of the iconic singer and lead of the ’60s girl group the Ronettes. Spector met the Beatles in London in 1964, and her crew became the first and only girl group to open for them. Given Spector developed a strong friendship with Lennon, she could feature in his biopic.
Haim as The Apple Scruffs
The Apple Scruffs were a devoted, hierarchical fandom troop—with their own membership cards!—that wanted to protect the band from who they believed were their more frenzied superfans. They became friends with the band, and Harrison wrote a song in 1970 in tribute to them. After Alana’s part in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ’70s-set film Licorice Pizza, her sisters could make up the ensemble and recruit their pals to fill out the rest of the Apple Scruffs. (There were nine.) Could the similarly dark-haired Mikey Madison or Margaret Qualley be enveloped into the fold too?
