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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star entered separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production of this record that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait 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 readily visible,” he remembered. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 very few questions.”

It was an challenging character to take on, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, and mentioned “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that solidified, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the musical component 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 bonded with the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White duly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … relating strongly 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. All the elements are 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 started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 sentiments about the film were initially simpler. “I thought 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 embrace more chances, 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 interested in,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project moved forward, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen visited the set often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s stupid ass 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 expresses denial.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was prepared to depict 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 common saying, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own way 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 disturbing was the way the film compelled him to return to challenging times in his own life. The recreation 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 uncanny; Springsteen described how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and quite wonderful.”

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

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the presence 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 amazing that we have that?”

There was an echo, perhaps, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the small crowd 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 ideally there’s an element of elevation that my audience brings home. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”