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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star came out separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: 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 sees White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a image of cool composure – spoke of first sighting 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 thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected preparing himself for an questioning 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 take on, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of focus 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 music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. 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 building self-belief … relating strongly 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. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying 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 originally less complicated. “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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s foolish self 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 handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and shakes his head.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s casting; he understood that the actor was prepared to represent the most thoughtful 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 portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just selecting traits and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film pushed him to return to difficult periods in his own life. The rebuilding 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 uncanny; Springsteen explained how often he saw 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 – capturing his turbulent early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early screening in the attendance of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

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