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Billed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, 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 decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of reptilian poise – mentioned first spotting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a live performer, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an questioning that did not come: “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 undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and mentioned “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the music aspect of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the learning he engaged in, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s 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 finest guitar you can practice with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 feelings about the film were originally simpler. “I thought I’m 76 years old, I am not overly concerned 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 helped that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really strange 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 signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he knew that the actor was ready to depict the most reflective 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 common saying, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the inner self outward, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something similar 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 pushed him to reexamine difficult periods 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 strange; Springsteen recounted how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his unpredictable early years, when he endured unidentified mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the fragility and kindness of his later years.

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

There was an reflection, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he told the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very believable world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience carries away. And with luck it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”