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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this album that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s talk, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a image of serene calm – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check 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 watched hours of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected preparing himself for an inquiry that did not come: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to take on, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of study he had to absorb, 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 energy was going into the musical component 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 musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … connecting deeply 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 examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the nicest guitar you can start with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 sentiments about the film were initially less complicated. “I figured 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 benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really strange 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 attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was ready to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a common saying, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly 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 revisit challenging times in his own life. The recreation 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 visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his turbulent early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and kindness 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 recalled all details”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very believable world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience brings home. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”