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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “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 actor and the music icon walked on separately, but to the matching segment of introductory track: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation of this record that provides the focus 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, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a picture of serene calm – spoke of first spotting White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he recalled. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert videos, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected bracing himself for an questioning 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 hardly any queries.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He mentioned often to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to absorb, and discussed “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that set, 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 learning he engaged in, it was through the tunes that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my attention was going into the audio dimension of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White promptly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the recording space, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … connecting deeply 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. All the elements are 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 nicest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing 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 thoughts about the film were at first simpler. “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 embrace more chances, in your work and in your life in general.” It benefited that Cooper was “a true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, apologising 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 stated this earlier, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White wags his finger and expresses denial.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was prepared to represent the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera tracked his personal thoughts,” 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 portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something akin to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film pushed 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 greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was uncanny; Springsteen recounted how often he saw 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 – depicting his turbulent early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the sensitivity and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen told of watching an early viewing in the presence of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she remembered everything”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

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