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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “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 music icon walked on separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this album that forms the core 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 exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of cool composure – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours 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 discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered bracing himself for an inquiry that never arrived: “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 daunting part to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of focus was going into the sonic element of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the study he pursued, it was through the songs that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration 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 firm. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s 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 start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 sentiments about the film were originally more straightforward. “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 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 standard musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it possibly became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s foolish self 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 attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was ready to represent the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just selecting traits and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original 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 find the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film compelled 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 finest and most tragic 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 quite a miracle, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the sensitivity and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the presence of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an reflection, perhaps, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an utopian space for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience carries away. And ideally it remains with them for as long as they need it.”