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Billed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star walked on separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation of this record 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 personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a picture of serene calm – mentioned first spotting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling himself for an inquiry that did not come: “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 scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an challenging character to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that solidified, 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 study he undertook, it was through the songs that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White promptly 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 … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s 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 finest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist 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 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 at first more straightforward. “I figured 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 accept greater hazards, 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 intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really strange with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” 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 prepared to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his personal thoughts,” 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 portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film compelled 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 finest and most tragic sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; Springsteen explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his turbulent early years, when he experienced unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an reflection, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an perfect realm for three hours,” he informed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of transcendence that my audience brings home. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”