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Billed as a conversation 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 rock star entered separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the making of this LP that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of becoming Bruce, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of serene calm – recalled first sighting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered steeling 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 thoroughly briefed, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information available, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that solidified, 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 learning he undertook, it was through the songs that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension 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 promptly recorded his own interpretations 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 reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s 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 practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager 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 feelings about the film were at first simpler. “I thought I’m 76 years old, I have few worries 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 individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s must be really strange with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was equipped to depict the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the inner self outward, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own method 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 unsettling was the way the film forced 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 strange; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he experienced unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the sensitivity and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early screening in the company 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 parallel, possibly, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the intimate audience 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 hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”