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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star walked on separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation 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 decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of reptilian poise – recalled first sighting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he noted. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” 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 occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling 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 undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the immense volume of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to take on, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that set, 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 learning he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. 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 … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 learn on,” White says. He commenced 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 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 more straightforward. “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 helped that Cooper was “a genuine 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 individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became stranger. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked 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 gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was prepared to represent the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own approach 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 pushed him to return to hard phases 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 uncanny; Springsteen explained how often he visited 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 – depicting his volatile early years, when he endured unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing 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 marvelous that we have that?”

There was an echo, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very believable world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”