Help! Why are none of the new Beatles cast from Liverpool? | Peter Bradshaw

So Sam Mendes has cast his Beatles tetralogy, but none are from Merseyside. Don’t worry, I’ve just invented the Beatles Cinematic Universe

Sam Mendes has announced the cast for his colossal four-film Beatles extravaganza: Harris Dickinson as John, Paul Mescal as Paul, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George – and to tumultuous acclaim he brought his Fab Four on stage at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, a now well-established affair in the film world, incidentally, satirised in a forthcoming episode of Seth Rogen’s TV comedy The Studio.

I’m sorry to say, however, that Sam has almost entirely ignored the casting suggestions that I made in February last year. For what this is worth, I went with Leo Woodall as Paul, Finn Wolfhard as George, Harry Melling as Ringo and Barry Keoghan as John (though Barry got Ringo in the end). But I like to think that Sam Mendes and his producer Pippa Harris were thinking on more or less the same lines as me. Interestingly, there are no American actors doing Brit accents – just the kind of well-trained British or Irish actors who can fabricate perfect American accents for American roles elsewhere.