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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star came out separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this LP that provides the focus 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 conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of serene calm – mentioned first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to take on, and discussed “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that solidified, 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 learning he undertook, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly 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 … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through 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 gave 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 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 don’t have 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 originally simpler. “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 benefited that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project moved forward, it possibly became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, expressing regret to White each time he showed up. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s silly presence 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 equipped to depict the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own method 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 disconcerting was the way the film forced him to reexamine hard phases 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 eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early viewing in the presence of his sister, who held his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it marvelous that we have that?”

There was an reflection, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an utopian space for three hours,” he addressed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And ideally it remains with them for as long as they need it.”