🔗 Share this article

Billed as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and offering “a special guest”, there was hardly any shock when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the intimate platform at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The actor and the rock star walked on separately, but to the same clip of introductory track: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

It is, after all, the creation of this LP 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 talk, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the complex method of becoming Bruce, and the inevitable strangeness of fiction intersecting with reality.

Springsteen – the whole time, a portrait of serene calm – spoke of first sighting White during a audio test at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was dressed in white attire, so he was simple to notice,” he noted. “I just casually gestured him to the stage and we said hi.” White was already well steeped in Springsteen’s music, had studied countless recordings of concert footage, and perused many interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a greater understanding of Springsteen as a concert act, and to talk over some of the details of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled bracing himself for an questioning that did not come: “I thought this guy is really gonna be interested in me …” he said. In the end, however, “Jeremy was so prepared, he really asked hardly any queries.”

It was an challenging character to undertake, White said. He spoke frequently to the sheer weight of Springsteen information accessible, the amount of study he had to acquire, and mentioned “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘nervousness that set, maybe, into focus.’”

“A lot of energy 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 audio dimension 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 duly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the vocal chamber, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re going through a great script, your job is straightforward,” he said. “And when you’re absorbing Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. All the elements are 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 nicest 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 noted expressing on their first meeting. “We lack the 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 feelings about the film were originally more straightforward. “I thought 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 intrigued by,” he said. “Not your standard musical biopic, but more of a individual-centered narrative with music.”

As the project gathered pace, it perhaps became more unusual. Springsteen visited the set often, expressing regret to White each time he arrived. “It’s has to be really strange with the guy’s stupid ass 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 attractive?’” In the seat beside him, White gestures in disagreement and shakes his head.

Springsteen had little uncertainty about White’s casting; he was aware that the actor was prepared to represent the most thoughtful 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 common saying, but he’s a stage legend.”

When he first saw White acting as him, he was struck by the actor’s approach. “His performance was totally from the core personality, not just picking elements and adopting them superficially,” he said. “It’s a original performance, but in some way it greatly relates to my story and myself.” He saw it as something like his own way 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 disturbing was the way the film pushed him to revisit difficult periods in his own life. The rebuilding of his grandparents’ home in Freehold, New Jersey – a house he once described as “the greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was strange; Springsteen described how often he visited 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 impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – portraying his volatile early years, when he endured unidentified mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the sensitivity and sweetness of his later years.

Springsteen shared watching an early showing in the presence of his sister, who clutched his hand throughout. Just a year younger than her brother, “she recalled all details”. At the end, she looked at him and said: “Isn’t it wonderful that we have that?”

There was an echo, possibly, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You establish an ideal world for three hours,” he addressed the intimate audience before him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very believable world. It has all the joyful and painful parts of life … But hopefully there’s an element of elevation that my audience carries away. And hopefully it lingers in their minds for as long as they need it.”