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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of cool composure – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was readily visible,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling himself for an interrogation that never arrived: “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 undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and mentioned “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 connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted 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 gaining assurance … feeling close 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 examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 began 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 lack the 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 sentiments about the film were originally less complicated. “I thought 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 aided that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really strange with the guy’s foolish self 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 wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was equipped to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to reexamine difficult periods in his own life. The reconstruction 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 strange; Springsteen explained how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and quite wonderful.”

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

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

There was an reflection, perhaps, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world for three hours,” he addressed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”