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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this record that forms the core 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 conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of cool composure – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled preparing himself for an interrogation that failed to materialize: “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 scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that solidified, 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 study he engaged in, 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] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. 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 … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 sentiments about the film were at first simpler. “I thought 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 helped that Cooper was “a genuine 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 personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, saying sorry to White each time he showed up. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was prepared to portray the most introspective 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 common saying, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but nevertheless it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to 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 disconcerting was the way the film forced 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 finest and most tragic sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen described how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and extremely moving.”

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

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the presence of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, maybe, 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 select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very credible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience brings home. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”