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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this LP that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – throughout, a picture of cool composure – spoke of 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 noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an daunting part to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and discussed “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry 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 research he undertook, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’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 booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … feeling close 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 reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are 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 best guitar you can practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 feelings about the film were initially less complicated. “I figured 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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really strange with the guy’s silly presence 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 good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was equipped to portray the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just selecting traits and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something similar to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly 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 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 eerie; Springsteen explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early screening 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 turned to him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the intimate audience 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 ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”