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Billed as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the rock star entered separately, but to the matching segment of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the making of this LP that forms the core 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, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of serene calm – mentioned first spotting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was simple to notice,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered preparing himself for an questioning that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so well-read, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to absorb, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort 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 songs that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical side 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 recording space, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … feeling close to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying 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 closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can practice with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying 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 less complicated. “I thought 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 helped that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became stranger. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s must be really strange with the guy’s silly presence 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 shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was equipped 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 common saying, but he’s a music icon.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was struck by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but nevertheless it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something similar to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling was the way the film compelled him to return to challenging times 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 strange; Springsteen described how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and extremely moving.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying 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 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 marvelous that we have that?”

There was an parallel, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an utopian space for three hours,” he told the select group before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But with luck there’s an element of uplift that my audience takes with them. And with luck it stays with them for as long as they need it.”