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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 compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the matching segment of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of serene calm – recalled first catching a glimpse of White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was readily visible,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an inquiry that failed to materialize: “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 challenging character to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and spoke of “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the learning he pursued, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected 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 gaining assurance … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through 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 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 session player 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 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 simpler. “I reasoned 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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It helped that Cooper was “a real 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 individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it possibly became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “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 stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he understood that the actor was prepared to portray the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his inner world,” 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 impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own method 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 disturbing was the way the film pushed him to return to hard phases in his own life. The rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

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

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing in the attendance of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm for three hours,” he informed the small crowd 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 elevation that my audience takes with them. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”