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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star walked on separately, but to the same clip of entrance music: 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 features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s talk, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of serene calm – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was readily visible,” he recalled. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert material, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled preparing himself for an questioning 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 daunting part to take on, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to absorb, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the study he undertook, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to vocalize and handle 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 booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He commenced 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 don’t have 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 feelings about the film were initially simpler. “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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a real 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 character-driven drama 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 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 shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he knew that the actor was equipped to portray the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something like 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 unsettling was the way the film pushed him to revisit 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 eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and extremely moving.”

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

Springsteen recounted watching an early viewing in the company of his sister, who grasped 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 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 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 plausible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience takes with them. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”