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Presented as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon came out separately, but to the identical excerpt of introductory track: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the creation of this record that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of reptilian poise – spoke of first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to discuss some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an interrogation 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 very few questions.”

It was an daunting part to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and discussed “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety 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 pursued, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy 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 adamant. White promptly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … 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 examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 best guitar you can start with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing 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 feelings about the film were originally simpler. “I reasoned 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 benefited 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 maybe became stranger. Springsteen visited the set often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was ready to represent the most reflective 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 music icon.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was entirely from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something like his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film compelled him to revisit challenging times in his own life. The reconstruction 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 visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his volatile early years, when he experienced unrecognized mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen told of 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 looked at him and said: “Isn’t it amazing that we have that?”

There was an echo, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm 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 wonderful and terrible parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”