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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “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 performer and the music icon entered separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s talk, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the detailed approach of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of cool composure – recalled first spotting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled 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 thoroughly briefed, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to take on, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, 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 set, 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 study he pursued, 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] wanted me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in 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 recording space, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly 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 reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are 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 began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We are pressed for time to learn the guitar,” Simo answered. “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 accept greater hazards, 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 drawn to,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really strange 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 handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he knew that the actor was prepared to depict the most thoughtful 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 cliche, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own approach 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 disconcerting was the way the film forced him to revisit 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 eerie; Springsteen described how often he visited 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 emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his unpredictable early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early screening in the company of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it amazing that we have that?”

There was an reflection, possibly, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very credible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of transcendence that my audience carries away. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”