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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon entered separately, but to the matching segment of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this record that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s talk, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of serene calm – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage 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 particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an interrogation that failed to materialize: “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 undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry 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 study he pursued, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. 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 … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re reading 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 best guitar you can practice with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 at first more straightforward. “I reasoned I’m 76 years old, I have few worries 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 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 character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, expressing regret 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 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 wags his finger and shakes his head.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was prepared to depict 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 common saying, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects 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 locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film forced him to reexamine difficult periods in his own life. The rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen recounted how often he saw 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he suffered undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen shared 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 looked at 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 utopian space for three hours,” he informed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”