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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the matching segment of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation of this LP that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

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 wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the specifics 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 prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to take on, and spoke of “the pressure 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 music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the learning he pursued, it was through the songs 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 perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … relating strongly 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 absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating 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 less complicated. “I figured I’m 76 years old, I don’t really care what the fuck I do any more,” he said. “Yeah, go ahead. At my age you embrace more chances, 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 intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps 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 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 wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s casting; 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 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 inside out, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film pushed him to reexamine challenging times 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 eerie; Springsteen explained how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the sensitivity and tenderness of his later years.

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

There was an parallel, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm for three hours,” he addressed 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 elevation that my audience carries away. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”