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Marketed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon walked on separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation of this LP that serves as the centerpiece for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts White as Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s conversation, guided by Edith Bowman, centered around the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a image of cool composure – spoke of first spotting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” 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 chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 daunting part to undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to absorb, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that solidified, 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 research he pursued, it was through the songs that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White accordingly 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 … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re examining 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 finest guitar you can practice 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 remembered stating on their first meeting. “We are pressed for 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 at first simpler. “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 take more risks, 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 conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project progressed, it possibly became stranger. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s must be really weird with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he liked 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 gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s choice; he knew that the actor was prepared to portray the most thoughtful 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 stage legend.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was impressed by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something similar to 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 unsettling was the way the film compelled him to reexamine 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 uncanny; Springsteen described how often he visited the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he suffered unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the presence of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it amazing that we have that?”

There was an parallel, perhaps, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he informed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very believable world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of elevation that my audience takes with them. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”