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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star came out separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production of this LP that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of cool composure – mentioned first spotting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed 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 onstage artist, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered bracing himself for an inquiry 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 scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to acquire, and mentioned “the pressure 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 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 tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White promptly recorded his own renditions 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 reading a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re examining 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 learn on,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We lack the time to learn the guitar,” Simo responded. “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 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 benefited that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret 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 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 wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was prepared to depict the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was struck by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film pushed him to return to hard phases in his own life. The recreation 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 returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an parallel, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create 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 believable world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”