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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon came out separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the initial lyrics 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 features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of reptilian poise – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 thoroughly briefed, he really asked very few questions.”

It was an daunting part to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy was going into the music aspect 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 bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can start with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 sentiments about the film were initially more straightforward. “I figured 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 accept greater hazards, 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 progressed, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s has to be really strange with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was prepared 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 stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just selecting traits and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film pushed him to revisit challenging times 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 eerie; 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 emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his unpredictable early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early viewing in the attendance of his sister, who grasped 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 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 small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”