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Marketed as a dialogue 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 performer and the rock star entered separately, but to the same clip of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the making of this record that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a image of cool composure – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 daunting part to accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that solidified, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of focus 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 undertook, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White duly recorded his own renditions 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 reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also gave 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 touring guitarist 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 thoughts about the film were originally simpler. “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 benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” 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 came to the filming location often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really odd with the guy’s stupid ass 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 good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and expresses denial.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was prepared to represent the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his personal thoughts,” 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 portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was entirely from the inner self outward, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He saw it as 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 disturbing was the way the film compelled 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 greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen recounted how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and very beautiful.”

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

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing 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 wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the emotion 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 credible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of elevation that my audience brings home. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”