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Marketed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon entered separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation of this record 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 life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of reptilian poise – mentioned first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he remembered. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an questioning that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight 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 ‘anxiety 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 engaged in, it was through the songs that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do 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 … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading 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 gave 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 practice with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying 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 thoughts about the film were at first less complicated. “I figured I’m 76 years old, I am not overly concerned what the fuck I do any more,” he said. “Yeah, go ahead. At my age you embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a real 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 progressed, it maybe became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s foolish self 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 good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was prepared to portray the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected 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 strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to return to challenging times in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the best and most sorrowful sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen recounted how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and tenderness 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 retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it amazing that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”