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Marketed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “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 matching segment of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the making of this record that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a picture of reptilian poise – recalled first spotting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, 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 set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the learning he undertook, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in 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 booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are 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 start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist 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 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 thoughts about the film were originally less complicated. “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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a genuine 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 perhaps became stranger. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was equipped to portray 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 cliche, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just selecting traits and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something similar to his own approach 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 disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to return to difficult periods 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 strange; Springsteen described how often he returned to 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 unpredictable early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.

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

There was an reflection, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience brings home. And ideally it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”