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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “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 performer and the rock star walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the production of this LP that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of reptilian poise – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, 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 details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an inquiry 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 scarcely any inquiries.”

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

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

For all the study he engaged in, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 feelings about the film were initially simpler. “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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided 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 individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen appeared on location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed 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 gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s choice; he understood that the actor was equipped to portray the most introspective 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 well-known phrase, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film compelled him to return to hard phases 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 eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he suffered undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an echo, possibly, 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 intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very credible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”