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Billed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star came out separately, but to the matching segment of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this LP that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a critical moment 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 unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a portrait of reptilian poise – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was readily visible,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an inquiry 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 challenging character to take on, White said. He spoke frequently to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to acquire, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of focus 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 concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] wanted me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White duly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, 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 straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 sentiments about the film were originally more straightforward. “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 helped that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it maybe became odder. Springsteen visited the set often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s must be really weird with the guy’s stupid ass 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 good-looking?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was equipped to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his inner world,” 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 struck by the actor’s approach. “His performance was completely from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own approach 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 disturbing was the way the film compelled 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 uncanny; Springsteen described how often he returned to 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 suffered unrecognized mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early viewing 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 turned to him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an reflection, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”