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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this LP that forms the core 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 conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a picture 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 easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert videos, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to talk over some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered preparing himself for an questioning that did not come: “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 very few questions.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information available, the amount of study he had to absorb, 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 focus was going into the sonic element of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the research he engaged in, it was through the tunes 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 vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying 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 presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating 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 initially less complicated. “I thought 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It helped that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really strange 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 handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was ready to represent the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his inner world,” 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 affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film pushed him to reexamine challenging times in his own life. The reconstruction 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 eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he visited 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 powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he endured unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who held 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 reflection, perhaps, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm 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 wonderful and terrible parts of life … But with luck 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.”