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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 rock star entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the making of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a pivotal point in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s conversation, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of transforming into the star, and the inevitable strangeness of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – throughout, a image of serene calm – spoke of first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was easy to spot,” he remembered. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert videos, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension 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 inquiry that never arrived: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so well-read, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to take on, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy 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 connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White promptly recorded his own interpretations 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 studying 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 sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can start with,” White says. He started guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so eager to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating 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 initially simpler. “I figured 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 helped that Cooper was “a true 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 individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project progressed, it possibly became more unusual. Springsteen appeared on location often, saying sorry to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s gotta be really odd with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” 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 ready to depict the most introspective 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 cliche, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White portraying him, he was impressed by the actor’s technique. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just choosing characteristics and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He saw it as something akin to his own way 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 disturbing was the way the film forced him to revisit challenging times 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 recounted 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 powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his turbulent early years, when he experienced undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early showing in the company 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 marvelous that we have that?”

There was an parallel, possibly, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And ideally it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”