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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon came out separately, but to the matching segment of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this LP that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – consistently, a picture of serene calm – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling 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 scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to absorb, and mentioned “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy 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 undertook, it was through the songs that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are right there.”

Springsteen also sent 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 practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We lack the time to learn the guitar,” Simo replied. “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 at first more straightforward. “I reasoned 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 aided that Cooper was “a real 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 individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it maybe became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed 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 expresses denial.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was prepared to depict the most introspective 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 stage legend.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was affected by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film pushed him to reexamine difficult periods 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 explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his turbulent early years, when he suffered unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an echo, perhaps, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he told the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience takes with them. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”