How Paul Mescal’s ‘body transformation’ for Beatles biopic role could be dangerous

Paul Mescal’s most recent role was as a burly Gladiator, and now he’s going to be playing a young Sir Paul McCartney in the much-anticipated Beatles biopic.

This week it was announced Paul, 29, would be taking up the role of Band on the Run hitmaker, 82, for the Sony Pictures biopic, also starring Barry Keoghan as Sir Ringo Starr, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison.

The four-part ‘cinematic event’ is set to be released in April 2028, by which time Paul will have reportedly shed his ripped physique to emulate Sir Paul’s more slender build.

A source told The Sun: ‘Obviously there weren’t really gyms around in the Sixties. 

‘The Beatles weren’t dead-lifting between gigs. 

‘Macca was always pretty lean and flexible — he has always been really into yoga — but this is a very different aesthetic to that of a burly gladiator, and Paul has been keeping his body pretty ripped, even after filming stopped.’

They also noticed how Sir Paul is a vegetarian, while actor Paul lives on mainly high protein steak, chicken and eggs.

Hey Jude hitmaker Sir Paul was experimenting with yoga in the 1960s, rather than weights. In a 2022 interview, the music legend explained how he does a bit of everything these days, but he perfected the headstand back in the day.,

‘I do a bit of the cross-trainer, a bit of running, a bit of cardio and then I do some weights, some abs on the Swiss ball, before ending up on the mat doing a few stretches. And then standing on my head,’ he told the Daily Mirror.

How will Paul Mescal get rid of his muscle for playing Sir Paul McCartney in the Beatles biopic?

Talking to Metro, muscle gain specialist Luke Donovan at Elevate London explained how Mescal could make this physical transformation, and what he definitely should not do.

‘If you stopped training entirely you’d have a lot of atrophy,’ he said.

From this you could end up with kyphosis- a curving of the spine that causes a bowing or rounding of the back.

‘Most definitely,’ that could happen if Paul weren’t to gradually phase out his Gladiator training, according to Luke. ‘Injuries can happen because of imbalances, and your posture could start to lose one side. When you stop activity, that starts to happen.’

‘If you give yourself 12 to 16 weeks you could do a significant amount in either direction,’ Luke said, recommending gradually phasing out strength training in this time frame. ‘You’d also have to look at a calorie deficit too,’ he adds.

‘I would never advise anything rapid in either direction. But these guys in Hollywood don’t mind doing that. I’ve heard of guys putting on 30 pounds in a month, which is unheard of.

‘But they’re training nearly every day and doing a massive calorie surplus. They will be getting around 200g of protein a day.

‘Paul will slowly reduce protein intake, overall calories and overall volume intensity and load, but still train.’

Mental health impact

‘I think mentally it’s a big hole,’ Luke says. ‘It’s such a juxtaposition. A lot of the actors get body dysmorphia. They don’t know what they should look like.

‘When you’re training that regularly you’re getting a massive mental reward. So when you stop your base level dopamine would come right down. You’d feel low, and even depressed.’

‘That’s my big claim to fame! I ­actually learned it in the ’60s, it was a yoga thing, and my argument is I need flexibility, not strength.’

Having found fame in 2020 playing Connell Waldron in the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s hit book Normal People, Paul was cast as Lucius Verus Aurelius in 2024’s Gladiator II.

For the role Paul trained ‘hard’ which did get tiring, he admitted while talking to Jordan North on Capital FM when the trailer dropped.

He said: ‘It’s a first-world problem. Like I had every amenity available to me. I had a great trainer. People telling me to eat, when to eat. And I think it’s just a byproduct. 

‘You have to train hard to be in a film like this and I kind of loved it. Of course, it gets tiresome at certain moments.’

Speaking to ET, the actor also commented that he didn’t want his body to look too ‘aesthetic’.

‘There was a lot of work that went into it,’ he said. ‘Lots of lifting heavy things… lots of squatting, pushing, pulling.

Some of the dramatic body transformations actors have made for films

Christian Bale has lost and gained a huge amount of weight during his career for various roles. He famously shed almost all of his body fat for The Machinist before bulking up by 100 pounds again for Batman Begins in 2005.

When Hugh Jackman reprised his Wolverine role in Deadpool and Wolverine last year, he ate 6,000 calories a day in preparation. He would work out for two-and-a-half hours a day and ate copious amounts of chicken.

He was performing in a stage play while beginning to prepare, and admitted he ‘split [his] pants three times’.

‘We didn’t kind of change the wheel with it, it was all kind of pretty standard in that regard, but I was keen for it not to look false or kind of overly aesthetic in any way.’

In another interview with Vanity Fair, Paul said that as his muscles grew, the way he carried himself changed.

‘Muscles start to grow, and that can be deemed aesthetic in certain capacities, but there is something about feeling strong in your body that elicits just a different feeling. You carry yourself differently,’ he said.

‘It has an impact on you psychologically in a way that is useful for the film.’

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