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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star entered separately, but to the matching segment of introductory track: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this album that forms the core 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 talk, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of cool composure – mentioned 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 easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to talk over some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected preparing 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 intimidating role to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to take on, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy 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 concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in 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 recording space, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … feeling close 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. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also gave White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can start 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 remembered stating on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 thoughts about the film were initially less complicated. “I figured 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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s must be really strange with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was equipped to depict the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just selecting traits and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own approach 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 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 best and most sorrowful sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; 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 emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he suffered unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early viewing 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 wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm 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 beautiful and awful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of elevation that my audience takes with them. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”