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

It is, after all, the making of this record 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 conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of serene calm – recalled first sighting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert footage, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance 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 interrogation that did not come: “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 scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an intimidating role to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, 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 sonic element of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the research he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating 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 thoughts about the film were originally simpler. “I thought I’m 76 years old, I have few worries 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 interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s silly presence 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 handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was prepared to represent the most introspective 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 stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s method. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless 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 find the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film compelled him to reexamine challenging times 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 recounted 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he experienced unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.

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

There was an parallel, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he informed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”