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In 2011, Martin Scorsese released a documentary about George Harrison, and Paul McCartney’s daughter Stella felt it was an important watch. Her father and Harrison didn’t always get along, due in part to the fact that Harrison believed McCartney and John Lennon overlooked his contributions to The Beatles. She thought it was good for audiences to get to know Harrison through the documentary, as he didn’t get as much attention as Lennon and McCartney.

Paul McCartney's daughter Stella wears a white jacket and stands in front of an orange background.
Stella McCartney | Rich Fury/Getty Images

Martin Scorsese released a documentary about George Harrison

In 2011, Scorsese released the two-part documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World. The Harrison family specifically reached out to Scorsese because they wanted a capable filmmaker who could portray Harrison’s music and his spiritual life.

“George’s outer life was well known and that would be an easy thing to do,” Harrison’s wife Olivia said, per IndieWire. “You could put together that story, but the inner life was going to be impossible. And I knew how deeply George felt about certain things in life and what he was trying to achieve and that letter from a very early age was just a seed of what he was thinking. That at the very pinnacle of the young, early career of The Beatles, there was something telling him that this was not going to fulfill him. I think I was hoping that that’s what would happen [with the film] and that’s what Marty tuned into.”

The project took five years to make and won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special.

Paul McCartney’s daughter believed the documentary was important

George Harrison: Living in the Material World featured interviews with his former bandmates and aimed to show a never-seen-before side to the Beatles’ guitarist. Stella McCartney was an immediate fan of the film.

“I loved it,” she told Interview Magazine in 2012. “Martin Scorsese is a genius. Olivia Harrison is a f***ing cool chick. I wanted to cry when Dhani [Harrison, George’s son] was reading out George’s parts.”

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She believed the documentary was important because it allowed audiences to get to know The Quiet Beatle.

“I thought it was really a beautiful tribute to an amazing man,” she said. “It’s really important that people know more about George, because obviously he didn’t get as much attention as the others.”

Paul McCartney’s daughter is close with George Harrison’s son

Their fathers’ levels of fame made for a unique upbringing for all The Beatles’ children. Dhani Harrison said he was closest to McCartney’s daughters, Stella and Mary.

“Of all of them [the Beatles children] I think I’m most similar to Stella and Mary,” he told The Daily Mail. “I really relate to the way they’ve dealt with their circumstances – they’re like big sisters to me.”

Like Stella, who is a fashion designer, Dhani has tried to forge his career path outside of his father’s shadow. He is a musician, but he feels a kinship with Stella because of it.

“I always knew that if I was going to do anything and be taken seriously in my life, I had to work and work very, very hard,” he said. “Because you can get a foot in the door by being George Harrison’s son, but you can’t stay there. It’s why I think I’m most like Stella and Mary McCartney. They’re the same.”

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