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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the production of this record that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

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 dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an interrogation that never arrived: “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 hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety 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 learning he pursued, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted 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 renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is very easy,” 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 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 touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 sentiments 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen visited the set often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was ready to depict the most thoughtful 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 stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to return to challenging times in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen described 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his unpredictable early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.

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

There was an reflection, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an utopian space for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible 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 ideally it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”