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Billed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and promising “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the same clip of entrance music: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the production 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 decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, steered by Edith Bowman, focused on the intricate process of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of performance blending with truth.

Springsteen – the whole time, a picture of cool composure – spoke of first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was clad in white, so he was readily visible,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert material, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected steeling himself for an inquiry 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 very few questions.”

It was an daunting part to accept, White said. He spoke frequently to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to absorb, and mentioned “the strain I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that set, maybe, into focus.’”

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

For all the study he pursued, it was through the tunes that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to sing and play 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 booth, singing Nebraska, and gaining assurance … 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 absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. It’s all right there.”

Springsteen also gave 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 practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalled saying on their first meeting. “We don’t have 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 thoughts about the film were at first more straightforward. “I figured I’m 76 years old, I don’t really care 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 real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative 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 has to be really odd with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he appreciated what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s casting; 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 followed his personal thoughts,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a well-known phrase, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just picking elements and applying them externally,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but nevertheless it deeply corresponds to my story and myself.” He saw it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film compelled him to revisit hard phases 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 strange; Springsteen explained how often he saw the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was quite a miracle, and quite wonderful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he endured unrecognized mental health issues and had a drinking problem, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who grasped 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 echo, maybe, 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 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 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.”