Kiltoom actor playing John Lennon in BBC series on the Beatles

Playing John Lennon in a forthcoming BBC series is a dream role for a young South Roscommon actor.

Speaking from Hamburg, where he is currently filming a new series about the early days of the Beatles, Rhys Mannion from Kiltoom told the Herald that he is delighted to be part of the series and to play the iconic, outspoken and much loved singer.

“People ask you what your dream job and I is say that I’m doing it. I don’t think you can find a more interesting character than John Lennon. I am in Hamburg for the next two months filming, then we move on to Berlin and Munich. Then we do the last month of filming in Liverpool,” he said. 

“Portraying people like the Beatles, you feel like you have to earn your place with the preparation that you do. I feel very lucky, but you have to earn the respect of the audience. All of us, all the actors, we are trying to make this the best we can do. In some ways, it feels so parallel to the Beatles at the time, it is all our first time in Hamburg too, and we have been given this opportunity.” Incorporating music, comedy, and emotional depth, 'Hamburg Days' will chart the band's early era when they performed more than 250 gigs in the German city between 1960 and 1962. It has been inspired by the memoirs of artist Klaus Voormann, who played bass on some Beatles records and designed the cover of their Revolver Album in 1966.

Rhys said he has been to Liverpool to visit the site synonymous with the band.

“I find Liverpool is really quite similar to Athlone in a lot of ways. It is a big city but has a really close community, so I felt quite at home,” he said. The son of Mary and Ciaran, Rhys said his parents will be visiting the set in Hamburg.

“They are the most supportive parents you could ask for,” he said. “ Playing such an enormously influential and multi-layered figure as John Lennon, Rhys approached the role with huge respect and compassion.

“He was around 19 at the time, and there is a certain maturity and harshness to him. He had lost his mother a couple of years prior to that. He lost his uncle who in a lot of ways was like a second father, and his own father walked out on him,” he said. “There is so much trauma surrounding this very young man. I think it put him in a certain mindset of anger towards the world and himself. He always questioned authority and officialdom. You can see that in his later work, but you can definitely see it in his early years.” 

For Rhys it is the latest coup in what is a very exciting career. The 23-year-old has already appeared in the thriller, ‘It Is in Us All’, ‘Freud’s Last Session’ and most recently the BBC drama ‘Titanic Sinks Tonight’.

An open call for casting for the show went out in December 2025, and Rhys said that the process to getting the role was a long but fun one, involving significant research about Lennon and the band, perfecting the accent, and of course playing music.

“I feel so lucky that I got a chance to spend months with the character before shooting, because it is one you could probably spend two years on and still not feel fully prepared,” he said.

Fortunately, Rhys is no stranger to music. He wrote and directed a musical, ‘Dawn na Dorcha’ about the Famine, at the age of just 17, after learning to play the guitar during Covid. He also has been performing as part of Dublin indie-rock band, Happy Daze.

“I asked my agent would they mind getting me an audition for the part of Paul McCartney initially,” he said with a laugh. “Funny how that worked.” He explained that everyone was given lines for John Lennon.

“I ended up doing five more stages within the audition process, auditioning for Paul for the most part. Then, finally in the last two rounds, they gave me the lines for John as well,” he said. “I just fell in love with the John character and I got the job.” Before the mega-stardom of the later ‘60s, the band were a different group, he said.

“They were wide-eyed boys from a very conservative area of Liverpool, now meeting the unhinged, untethered world of rock and roll in Hamburg,” Rhys said. “They were there for months, and they played up to eight hours a night for some nights. They were living on a diet of nothing and just playing rock and roll. There were other bands from Liverpool who were there at the time, but I think it is a testament to who the Beatles were that they were open-eyed enough to let some of the influences of Hamburg affect them and change them, like how they did with their trip to India, like how they did with ‘Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band’ when they decided they were done with touring so let’s make concept albums. They were always looking to do something different.” 

He said John Lennon while playing would make up his own lyrics to famous songs, something that endeared him to song writing partner, Paul McCartney.

“He loved to mess around with structure,” said Rhys. “He used to play guitar chords differently because his mother taught him the banjo first. He was brash and pushed limits, I think he took a lot of pain and try to make comedy out of it.” He hopes that the six-part drama will be shown on BBC One next year.