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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the same clip of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation of this LP that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of reptilian poise – recalled first spotting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was readily visible,” he recalled. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an inquiry that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an intimidating role to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to acquire, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry 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 connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly 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 reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He began 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 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 at first less complicated. “I reasoned 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 interested in,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and expresses denial.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was ready to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly 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 reconstruction of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the finest and most tragic sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; 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 powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he experienced unidentified mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability 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 turned to him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an parallel, perhaps, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world 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 beautiful and awful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”