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Billed 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 compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the music icon came out separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the starting verses of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this album that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s exchange, moderated by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the inescapable oddity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of cool composure – spoke of first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert footage, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered steeling 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 prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of preparation he had to take on, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that solidified, 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 related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also gave 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 start with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 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 true 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 character-driven drama with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s must be really strange with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, 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 little uncertainty about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was equipped to portray the most introspective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked 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 acting as him, he was affected by the actor’s approach. “His performance was entirely from the core personality, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own method 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 disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to revisit challenging times in his own life. The recreation of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the best and most sorrowful 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 emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his unpredictable early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the attendance of his sister, who grasped 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 parallel, maybe, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an utopian space for three hours,” he told the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very believable world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of uplift that my audience takes with them. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”