“It’s a movie, not a documentary”: Ringo Starr on Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles films

Speaking in the new issue of Uncut – in shops now and available to buy online from us here – Ringo Starr reflects on Sam Mendes’ forthcoming quartet of Beatles films, from advising on scripts to meeting Barry Keoghan, his on‑screen alter ego. Starr says the biopics will balance invention with authenticity: “There’s gonna be some reality to it” in the finished films…

“Barry came to live with me for a year, so he’d really get my mannerisms… No, I’m just shitting on you!” laughs Starr. “He came over one afternoon for two hours and we said hello. Then I was in London last year and we went to the set. We got lucky, because the other John and the other Paul were having an argument. What? How great!

“The good thing about it is, there’s gonna be some reality to it. Though we all love the Dick Lester movies, we’re just ‘the boys’, you know. But I spoke to Sam for days. The first time he sent the script, we were in London and we sat for two days. There was a lot of stuff I personally didn’t want in the film. ‘OK, we’ll take that out…’

“We’re all in each other’s stories. I thought, ‘I don’t know how he’s going to do it, just let him get on with it.’ We trust him. I’ll be as surprised as any of you, because it’s a movie, not a documentary. The first couple of weeks, I was stuck in documentary mode. ‘Well, that didn’t happen then and he wasn’t there…’ In the end, actually speaking to Paul, we’re both like, ‘What’s that? OK, it’s a movie. It’s not a documentary. Let’s relax behind it.’”

Elsewhere in our interview, Starr traces a lifelong love affair with country music, from post‑war Liverpool matinees and teenage heroes to Nashville sessions that helped steady him after The Beatles’ break‑up. Reflecting on Long Long Road and his late‑career partnership with T Bone Burnett, he explains: “For the last year or so, I’ve been thinking about where I came from — and where I ended up…”