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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock 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 matching segment of entrance music: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production of this album that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of serene calm – mentioned first sighting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was readily visible,” he noted. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected preparing 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 prepared, he really asked very few questions.”

It was an daunting part to take on, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and mentioned “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy was going into the musical component of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the research he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’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 recording space, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … relating strongly 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 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 practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 feelings about the film were initially 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 helped that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen came to the filming location often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really strange with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked 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 equipped to represent the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured 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 acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to find 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 rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen described how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an parallel, perhaps, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But with luck 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.”