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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation 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 talk, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of cool composure – mentioned first spotting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion 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 reflected bracing himself for an questioning that failed to materialize: “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 daunting part to undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to take on, and spoke of “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 study he engaged in, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White promptly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … feeling close 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. It’s all 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 best guitar you can learn on,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret 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 enjoyed 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 signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s choice; he was aware that the actor was equipped to represent the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his internal life,” 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 portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly 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 rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing in the attendance of his sister, who grasped 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 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 establish an utopian space for three hours,” he told the intimate audience 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 uplift that my audience brings home. And ideally it stays with them for as long as they need it.”