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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage 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 starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation of this album that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s talk, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the unavoidable peculiarity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a image of cool composure – mentioned first spotting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an interrogation 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to take on, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to take on, and spoke of “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 music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the research he undertook, it was through the songs that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White promptly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply 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 absorbing 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 nicest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 feelings about the film were originally simpler. “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 embrace more chances, 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 conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really strange with the guy’s foolish self 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 shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was prepared to portray the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly 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 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 returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an ideal world for three hours,” he addressed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible 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.”