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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon walked on 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 creation of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of reptilian poise – recalled first sighting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an inquiry that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an intimidating role to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to take on, and mentioned “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy was going into the musical component of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the learning he undertook, it was through the tunes that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, 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 very easy,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can practice with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We are pressed for time to learn the guitar,” Simo replied. “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 am not overly concerned 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 benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really odd with the guy’s silly presence 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 attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he understood that the actor was equipped to represent the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured 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 approach. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own method 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 compelled him to revisit challenging times in his own life. The recreation 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 strange; Springsteen explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

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

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

There was an parallel, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very believable world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”