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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star came out separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this LP that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – throughout, a image 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 casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed 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 live performer, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected preparing himself for an interrogation 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of study he had to acquire, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that hardened, 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 research he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White promptly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, 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. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying 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 thoughts about the film were at first simpler. “I reasoned 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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s foolish self 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 shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was ready to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his internal life,” 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 playing him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the inner self outward, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to reexamine challenging times 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 uncanny; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he suffered unrecognized mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an parallel, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he addressed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience carries away. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”