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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 showed up on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star came out separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this record that forms the core 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, moderated by Edith Bowman, centered around the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of serene calm – recalled first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a live performer, and to explore 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 thoroughly briefed, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to absorb, and discussed “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy 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 engaged in, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White accordingly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is quite simple,” 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 nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician 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 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 sentiments about the film were initially 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 helped 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 moved forward, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set 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 enjoyed what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and shakes his head.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was ready 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 stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was entirely from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something similar to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film pushed him to revisit 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 strange; Springsteen recounted how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and extremely moving.”

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

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing in the attendance of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the select group 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 carries away. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”