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Marketed as a dialogue with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen showed up on the compact set at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star entered separately, but to the identical excerpt of opening tune: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, in the end, the production 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 exchange, steered by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of transforming into the star, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.

Springsteen – consistently, a picture of cool composure – 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 noted. “I just kind of waved him to the stage and we greeted each other.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert videos, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity for a deeper insight of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen reflected steeling himself for an interrogation 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 scarcely any inquiries.”

It was an challenging character to accept, White said. He referred repeatedly to the sheer weight of Springsteen information available, the amount of study he had to absorb, and discussed “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness 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 research he engaged in, it was through the songs that he really related to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] expected me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was adamant. 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 finding some confidence … feeling close 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 examining Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also presented White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the nearest he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the finest guitar you can learn on,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White remembered stating on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 thoughts about the film were initially less complicated. “I thought I’m 76 years old, I have few worries 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 true blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be drawn to,” he said. “Not your conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project progressed, it perhaps became odder. Springsteen came to the filming location often, apologising to White each time he showed up. “It’s gotta be really weird with the guy’s silly presence standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed 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 wags his finger and signals dissent.

Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s casting; he knew that the actor was equipped to represent the most thoughtful time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera captured 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 affected by the actor’s method. “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 nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He saw it as something like his own approach to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives vary significantly from his own. “You have to discover the part of them that is part of you.”

More disconcerting was the way the film pushed him to reexamine difficult periods in his own life. The reconstruction of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; Springsteen explained 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his unpredictable early years, when he endured unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and kindness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the attendance 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 wonderful that we have that?”

There was an parallel, possibly, of the sensation Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You create an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the select group before him last night. “It’s not a fictional universe. It’s a very plausible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of uplift that my audience carries away. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”