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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon came out separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, 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 pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of serene calm – recalled first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he remembered. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an questioning that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so well-read, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the sonic element 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 music itself that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … feeling close 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 absorbing 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 nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 feelings about the film were originally less complicated. “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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a true 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 moved forward, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed 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 gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was ready to portray the most thoughtful 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 music icon.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was struck by the actor’s method. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film pushed him to return to challenging times in his own life. The rebuilding 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 eerie; Springsteen explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and extremely moving.”

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

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

There was an echo, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very believable world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience carries away. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”