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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of introductory track: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this LP that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of serene calm – mentioned first sighting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an interrogation that did not come: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so well-read, he really asked very few questions.”

It was an intimidating role to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to acquire, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that solidified, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the learning he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying 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 most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 sentiments about the film were at first more straightforward. “I reasoned I’m 76 years old, I don’t really care 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 helped that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it maybe became odder. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he showed up. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was equipped to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds 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 discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film forced him to return to difficult periods in his own life. The rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an echo, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience brings home. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”