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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen appeared 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 opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the making of this record that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, centered around the intricate process of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of reptilian poise – spoke of first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to explore some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling himself for an interrogation that never arrived: “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 challenging character to accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to acquire, and spoke of “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of focus was going into the sonic element 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 tunes that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White duly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … relating strongly 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 reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also sent 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 commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing 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 sentiments about the film were initially simpler. “I figured 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 take more risks, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really strange with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and shakes his head.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was equipped to depict 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 cliche, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own method 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 compelled him to revisit hard phases in his own life. The reconstruction 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 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 – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

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

There was an reflection, possibly, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an ideal world for three hours,” he addressed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very credible world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience carries away. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”