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Marketed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen showed up 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 entrance music: the opening lines 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 casts White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of cool composure – spoke of first spotting White during a audio test 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 videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered bracing himself for an questioning that failed to materialize: “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 challenging character to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, 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 attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White duly 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 … connecting deeply 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 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 nicest guitar you can practice 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 remembered stating on their first meeting. “We are pressed for time to learn the guitar,” Simo answered. “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 more straightforward. “I thought 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen visited the set often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s foolish self 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 good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was ready to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was impressed by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something akin to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film forced him to return to difficult periods 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 explained 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he suffered undiagnosed mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early viewing in the company of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she turned to him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience takes with them. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”