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Billed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star came out 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 LP that serves as the centerpiece 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 exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of cool composure – mentioned first spotting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an interrogation that never arrived: “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 very few questions.”

It was an intimidating role to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning 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 music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the learning he engaged in, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White duly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is very easy,” 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 most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can start with,” White says. He started 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 are pressed for 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 originally 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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a genuine 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 progressed, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s must be really weird with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he liked 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 shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was prepared to portray the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He saw it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to locate 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 recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the best and most sorrowful 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 remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his turbulent early years, when he endured unrecognized mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, of the emotion 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 beautiful and awful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of elevation that my audience brings home. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”