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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star came out separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation of this LP that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s talk, moderated by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of reptilian poise – recalled first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was easy to spot,” he remembered. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected preparing 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 well-read, he really asked very few questions.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to absorb, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety 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 bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. 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 … connecting deeply 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. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 sentiments about the film were at first more straightforward. “I reasoned 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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a true 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 character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really strange with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was ready to represent the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his inner world,” 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 technique. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly 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 reexamine hard phases in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he visited 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 – depicting his volatile early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted 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 looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an reflection, possibly, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he addressed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”