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

It is, after all, the production of this album 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 exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inevitable strangeness of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of reptilian poise – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled preparing 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to take on, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy 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 engaged in, it was through the tunes that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White duly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … 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 absorbing 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 finest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing 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 thoughts about the film were at first more straightforward. “I figured 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 real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it maybe became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was equipped to portray the most reflective 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 music icon.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something like his own way 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 reexamine hard phases in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the best and most sorrowful sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen explained how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his unpredictable early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early screening in the attendance of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an reflection, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an utopian space for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. 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.”