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Presented as a discussion with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon entered separately, but to the same clip of opening tune: the initial lyrics of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, ultimately, the creation of this record that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which features White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s talk, guided by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable oddity of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of cool composure – spoke of first sighting White during a rehearsal 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 greeted each other.” White was already deeply immersed in Springsteen’s music, had viewed extensive footage of concert videos, and consumed numerous interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a live performer, and to discuss some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen remembered 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 thoroughly briefed, he really asked very few questions.”

It was an daunting part to undertake, White said. He referred repeatedly to the tremendous amount of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of preparation he had to absorb, and mentioned “the stress I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘worry that hardened, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of focus 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 undertook, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical side of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to vocalize and handle the guitar, and I said, ‘I can’t do 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 booth, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … 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 absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 – the most similar he could find to the guitar used for Nebraska, and “just about the best guitar you can practice with,” White says. He commenced guitar lessons, via Zoom, with touring guitarist 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 answered. “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 simpler. “I figured 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 benefited that Cooper was “a real blue-collar film-maker” making “the kind of film I would be intrigued by,” he said. “Not your typical musical biopic, but more of a personality-focused story with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it possibly became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, apologising to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really strange with the guy’s foolish self standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about White’s selection; he knew that the actor was ready to portray the most reflective time in his recording career. “I’d watched The Bear, and how the camera followed his inner world,” he said. “And if you see him in a film, it’s a cliche, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White playing him, he was impressed by the actor’s approach. “His performance was entirely from the inside out, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it 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 disturbing was the way the film pushed 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 finest and most tragic 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 remarkable, and very beautiful.”

Similarly, it was “a very powerful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – depicting his volatile early years, when he suffered undiagnosed mental health issues and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and tenderness of his later years.

Springsteen recounted watching an early screening in the attendance of his sister, who grasped his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she faced him and said: “Isn’t it amazing that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an ideal world for three hours,” he informed the small crowd before him last night. “It’s not a imaginary place. It’s a very credible world. It has all the beautiful and awful parts of life … But ideally there’s an element of transcendence that my audience carries away. And with luck it remains with them for as long as they need it.”