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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this album that provides the focus 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, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of serene calm – mentioned first sighting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he remembered. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered preparing 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 prepared, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an intimidating role to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that solidified, 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 undertook, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White duly recorded his own versions 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 reading a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s 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 nicest guitar you can learn on,” 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 are pressed for time to learn the guitar,” Simo replied. “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 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really odd with the guy’s stupid ass 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 attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was equipped to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his internal life,” 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 playing him, he was struck by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to revisit hard phases in his own life. The rebuilding 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 saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his unpredictable early years, when he endured unidentified mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early showing 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 faced him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space 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.”