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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the same clip of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the making of this LP that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of serene calm – recalled first spotting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an questioning that failed to materialize: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to absorb, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the study he pursued, it was through the tunes that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We lack the time to learn the guitar,” Simo replied. “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 reasoned 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was equipped to depict the most introspective 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 well-known phrase, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just selecting traits and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something similar to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film compelled him to return to challenging times in his own life. The rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the finest and most tragic sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his unpredictable early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he told the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And ideally it remains with them for as long as they need it.”