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Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon entered separately, but to the matching segment of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the making of this album that provides the focus 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 talk, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the unavoidable peculiarity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a image of reptilian poise – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered bracing himself for an inquiry 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 very few questions.”

It was an challenging character to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to take on, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that set, 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 research he undertook, it was through the music itself that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are 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 finest guitar you can start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing 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 thoughts about the film were originally simpler. “I reasoned 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 helped that Cooper was “a true 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 personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became stranger. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was equipped to represent the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his personal thoughts,” 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 acting as him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to find the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film compelled 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 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 quite a miracle, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he experienced unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted 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 turned to him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an parallel, perhaps, 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 select group before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience takes with them. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”