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Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “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 actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the production of this record that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which casts 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 intricate process of embodying Springsteen, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – throughout, a portrait of reptilian poise – recalled first spotting 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 noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an chance for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a concert act, and to explore some of the specifics of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected 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 well-read, he really asked scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an intimidating role to undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the immense volume of Springsteen information out there, the amount of learning he had to absorb, and spoke of “the strain 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 engaged in, 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 sing and play the guitar, and I said, ‘I am not skilled in those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was insistent. White duly recorded his own interpretations of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is very easy,” he said. “And when you’re examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all 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 learn on,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player 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 originally less complicated. “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 accept greater hazards, in your work and in your life in general.” It helped that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project moved forward, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s has to be really weird 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 handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was equipped to depict the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his internal life,” 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 acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s technique. “His performance was completely from the inside out, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He viewed it as something like his own method to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives differ so greatly from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”

More disturbing was the way the film pushed him to revisit challenging times in his own life. The reconstruction 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 strange; Springsteen described how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very emotional thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his turbulent early years, when he endured undiagnosed mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early screening in the attendance of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she retained every memory”. At the end, she faced 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 select group 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 with luck there’s an element of transcendence that my audience takes with them. And ideally it stays with them for as long as they need it.”