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Billed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock 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 identical excerpt of entrance music: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this record that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of reptilian poise – 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 recalled. “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 greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling himself for an inquiry that failed to materialize: “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 intimidating role to take on, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and mentioned “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry 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 undertook, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’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 gaining assurance … feeling close 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 presented 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 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 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 thoughts about the film were at first simpler. “I figured 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 take more risks, 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 conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project moved forward, it possibly became odder. Springsteen visited the set often, saying sorry to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really odd with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, 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 choice; he understood that the actor was prepared to depict the most introspective 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 music icon.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to return to challenging times 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 eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and quite wonderful.”

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

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing 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 faced him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an reflection, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm for three hours,” he addressed the intimate audience 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 takes with them. And ideally it stays with them for as long as they need it.”