Paul Mescal took a break from filming his new Beatles movie – part of a four-pack on each Beatle, all directed by Sam Mendes – to talk about the buzzy year-end awards entry, “Hamnet” where he plays William Shakespeare, no less.

What’s wild is Mescal, 29, really does resemble Paul McCartney, the Beatle he’s playing. It’s not just the hair, which is minus Beatle bangs, it’s the suggestion.  A tribute to the alchemy that great actors can sometimes manage as they transform.

“Hamnet,” adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 speculative novel, wonders how the death of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, affected his marriage to Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and produced his tragedy “Hamlet.”

As filming began director Chloé Zhao — one of three women to win the Best Director Oscar (for “Nomadland”) — announced she wanted a sexy Shakespeare.

Mescal had no issue with that clarion call on how to play one of history’s most influential yet unknown figures.

“That’s an agreement we both felt,” he said. “The portrait of Shakespeare that we see, with ruffles, sharp features? We don’t know if that’s an accurate representation of what he looked like.

“But in terms of the film, I’m assuming that’s kind of tongue in cheek with Chloé but it points to breaking assumptions.

“The minute you see me and Jessie in the film, it immediately destabilizes an audience because, ‘Oh! that doesn’t look like the portrait I’ve seen of Shakespeare.’ It allows me and Jessie to be in our bodies. To feel comfortable and confident in our sexuality and how we express that.

“It takes the pressure of the myth of what he looked like, talked like, away and out of our hands.”

Mescal’s roles have ranged in time from ancient Rome, the Elizabethan age, WWI and post-WWII New Orleans. How does a time period inform his work?

“The time period doesn’t really affect me. In research, it does. But I don’t lean on that. Because that really falls on a production designer, the costume designer.

“You have to know, What is the cultural context for the character? But ultimately, I can’t show you the Elizabethan era or World War One. That work is done by other people.

“I also find I have a greater curiosity for the inside of it all. It’s weird. The more you like Paul McCartney or Shakespeare, the more you think about them, the more that they just start to, like, show up in your body.

“I know my face is the same as it was, or since I’ve been an adult.

“But, like, it just does that weird, spiritually, witchy (expletive) that I think happens with acting. Where it’s when you think about them, they start to just like pop out.”

“Hamnet” is in theaters