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Marketed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of introductory track: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this LP that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, 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 dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight 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 questioning 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 intimidating role to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to acquire, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness 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 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] wanted me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also presented 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 practice with,” White says. He started 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 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 at first simpler. “I thought 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 genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s has to 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 expresses denial.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was prepared to represent the most reflective 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 common saying, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to 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 compelled him to return to difficult periods 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 strange; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and extremely moving.”

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

Springsteen shared watching an early screening in the company of his sister, who held 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 wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an perfect realm for three hours,” he addressed the select group 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 elevation that my audience takes with them. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”