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Billed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star walked on separately, but to the matching segment of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the making of this LP that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of serene calm – mentioned first sighting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was easy to spot,” he remembered. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected steeling himself for an inquiry that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so thoroughly briefed, he really asked very few questions.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the musical component of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the research he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We don’t have time to learn the guitar,” Simo answered. “We have time to learn these five Bruce songs.”

Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen on the set of Deliver Me From Nowhere in 2024.

Springsteen’s own thoughts about the film were at first less complicated. “I figured I’m 76 years old, I have few worries what the fuck I do any more,” he said. “Yeah, go ahead. At my age you embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It helped that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and expresses denial.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was prepared to represent the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film pushed him to reexamine hard phases in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the best and most sorrowful sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; Springsteen explained how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his volatile early years, when he experienced unidentified mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early screening in the attendance of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an echo, perhaps, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he told the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very believable world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And ideally it stays with them for as long as they need it.”