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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, centered around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of reptilian poise – spoke of first sighting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was easy to spot,” he remembered. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled preparing 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 well-read, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the learning he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension 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 adamant. White duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re reading 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 best guitar you can start with,” 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 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 originally less complicated. “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 helped 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 character-driven drama with music.”

As the project moved forward, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed 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 shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was equipped to portray the most introspective 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 common saying, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film forced him to return to difficult periods in his own life. The reconstruction of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; 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 powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he experienced unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early viewing in the presence of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an reflection, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very credible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience carries away. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”