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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was scarcely any astonishment when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of introductory track: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production of this record that forms the core 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 conversation, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the detailed approach of embodying Springsteen, and the inevitable strangeness of art meeting life.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of reptilian poise – spoke of first spotting White during a rehearsal at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was easy to spot,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert material, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled preparing 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 prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an intimidating role to undertake, White said. He mentioned often to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of learning he had to acquire, and discussed “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the research he pursued, it was through the music itself that he really related to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the audio dimension 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 versions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and building self-belief … relating strongly to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re studying a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re examining 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 nicest guitar you can start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so thrilled to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying 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 aided that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be interested in,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became stranger. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret 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 enjoyed 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 gestures in disagreement and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he was aware that the actor was equipped to represent the most introspective 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 technique. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just selecting traits and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something similar to his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film forced him to revisit difficult periods in his own life. The rebuilding 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 remarkable, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his unpredictable early years, when he suffered unrecognized mental health issues and drank heavily, and the fragility and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the company 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 reflection, maybe, of the feeling Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an perfect realm for three hours,” he told the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of transcendence that my audience brings home. And hopefully it remains with them for as long as they need it.”