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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the production of this LP 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, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of serene calm – spoke of first sighting White during a rehearsal 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 greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert videos, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of study he had to acquire, and mentioned “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, 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 study he engaged in, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted 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 renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can practice 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 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 at first simpler. “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 helped that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really weird with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed 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 minimal hesitation about White’s choice; he understood that the actor was prepared to depict the most reflective 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 portraying him, he was struck by the actor’s method. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own approach 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 revisit difficult periods in his own life. The reconstruction of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his unpredictable early years, when he experienced unrecognized mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the sensitivity and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early viewing in the attendance of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, perhaps, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an perfect realm for three hours,” he addressed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And ideally it stays with them for as long as they need it.”