Ringo Starr has all-but-confirmed the actor playing him in Sam Mendes’s four Beatles biopics is—Ringo-style drum roll please—Barry Keoghan. Entertainment Tonight asked Starr if the rumours about the casting were true—other speculation has Paul (Mescal) as Paul (McCartney) and Harris Dickinson as John Lennon—and the Beatle said of Keoghan that “I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many.”
So much for a carefully planned casting-news rollout! We can safety assume the Saltburn actor wouldn’t be busy trying to nail the drum fills on “Here Comes the Sun” if he wasn’t locked into the role. And this earlier-than-expected nugget of big-budget biopic news is surely positive, because Barry as Ringo—Bingo? Steoghan?—is an inspired bit of casting. The goofiest guy in modern cinema taking on the cheekiest Scouser who ever slapped some cymbals? Whatever big bucks Sam Mendes is making, they need to be bigger.
You can see this affinity right there in Ringo’s confirmation: “I believe he’s somewhere taking drum lessons, and I hope not too many”. People always made fun of him for being the least talented member of the Fab Four, hence the famous put-down that he wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles. This kind of reputation could eat up a man’s insides—instead Ringo jokes about it.
That humor and grounded self-deprecation was always there, even at the wild heights of Beatlemania. Take a previous example of Ringo on screen: the real Ringo, this time, in the 1964 film A Hard Day’s Night. It’s a clever, fun comedy which follows the Beatles playing versions of themselves dodging crazed fans and getting up to various hijinks. Starr plays the fall guy wonderfully. He’s forced to look after McCartney’s troublesome grandad, who mercilessly mocks the size of his nose. A young lady in a train carriage beckons Ringo to come and join her, but he doesn’t. Why not, asks George Harrison? “She’ll only reject me,” he replies with flat resignation. “I know the psychological pattern; it plays havoc with me drum skins.”
