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Billed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “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 actor and the rock star came out separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the making of this LP that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s conversation, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of reptilian poise – recalled first catching a glimpse of White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalled. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to explore some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled steeling himself for an interrogation that did not come: “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 intimidating role to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to take on, and mentioned “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of effort was going into the musical component of the film” … Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.

For all the study he pursued, it was through the tunes that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. White duly recorded his own versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the closest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We don’t have time to learn the guitar,” Simo replied. “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 at first less complicated. “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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It aided that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project progressed, it possibly became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really strange with the guy’s foolish self 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 attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he understood 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 personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More unsettling 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 uncanny; Springsteen recounted how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was truly wondrous, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he endured unidentified mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the sensitivity and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early screening in the presence of his sister, who clutched 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 amazing that we have that?”

There was an echo, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an perfect realm for three hours,” he informed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very believable world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience brings home. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”