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

It is, in the end, the creation of this album that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of serene calm – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was readily visible,” he recalled. “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 material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to talk over some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered steeling himself for an interrogation that failed to materialize: “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 mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort 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 engaged in, it was through the tunes that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also presented 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 start with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating 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 sentiments about the film were at first less complicated. “I figured I’m 76 years old, I have few worries 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 helped that Cooper was “a genuine blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really weird with the guy’s foolish self 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 shakes his head.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was prepared to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured his internal life,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was affected by the actor’s method. “His performance was totally from the inner self outward, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own way 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 disturbing was the way the film compelled him to return to 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 eerie; Springsteen explained how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his turbulent early years, when he suffered undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing 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 looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, perhaps, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very credible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”