Presented as a conversation with Jeremy Allen White, and hinting at “a special guest”, there was very little surprise when Bruce Springsteen appeared on the small stage at Spotify’s London offices on Tuesday evening. The performer and the music icon walked on separately, but to the identical excerpt of entrance music: the opening lines of Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.
It is, in the end, the production of this album that forms the core for Scott Cooper’s new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, which sees White as Springsteen at a decisive juncture in the singer’s personal and professional journey. Much of the evening’s exchange, guided by Edith Bowman, revolved around the detailed approach of becoming Bruce, and the unavoidable peculiarity of art meeting life.
Springsteen – consistently, a image of reptilian poise – mentioned first catching a glimpse of White during a sound check at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was simple to notice,” he remembered. “I just beckoned him to the stage and we exchanged hellos.” White was already thoroughly versed in Springsteen’s music, had watched hours of concert footage, and read a glut interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an occasion for a enhanced comprehension of Springsteen as a onstage artist, and to explore some of the particulars of the Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalled 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 daunting part to take on, White said. He referred repeatedly to the sheer weight of Springsteen information out there, the amount of study he had to acquire, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘focus’. I called it ‘anxiety that solidified, 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 study he pursued, it was through the tunes that he really bonded with the part. “A lot of my concentration was going into the musical component of the film,” he said. “[Scott] asked me to perform and strum the guitar, and I said, ‘I don’t do those things … are you sure?’” Cooper was firm. White accordingly recorded his own renditions of Springsteen’s songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio], in the booth, singing Nebraska, and finding some confidence … connecting deeply to Bruce, in a way,” he said. “When you’re reading a great script, your job is quite simple,” he said. “And when you’re reading Bruce’s lyrics, it’s the same. Everything’s right there.”
Springsteen also sent 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 start with,” White says. He began guitar lessons, via Zoom, with professional musician JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White noted expressing 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 at first more straightforward. “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 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 conventional musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”
As the project progressed, it maybe became odder. Springsteen appeared on location often, expressing regret to White each time he made an appearance. “It’s must be really odd with the guy’s stupid ass standing there,” he said. But he enjoyed what he saw: “I’ve mentioned this previously, but I kept thinking ‘Damn, when did I get that handsome?’” In the seat beside him, White shakes his head and shakes his head.
Springsteen had minimal hesitation about White’s selection; he understood that the actor was equipped 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 common saying, but he’s a music icon.”
When he first saw White acting as him, he was impressed by the actor’s method. “His performance was completely from the inner self outward, not just choosing characteristics and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-copycat performance, but nevertheless it strongly connects to my story and myself.” He considered it something akin to his own way to songwriting – to writing about people whose lives are very different from his own. “You have to locate the part of them that is part of you.”
More unsettling was the way the film compelled 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 greatest and saddest sanctuary I’ve ever known” was eerie; Springsteen recounted how often he returned to the home in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again … it was remarkable, and quite wonderful.”
Similarly, it was “a very impactful thing” to see Stephen Graham as his father – capturing his turbulent early years, when he endured unrecognized mental health issues and consumed alcohol excessively, and the fragility and tenderness of his later years.
Springsteen told of watching an early showing in the company of his sister, who held 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 reflection, maybe, of the emotion Springsteen hopes to give his own audiences through his live shows. “You build an utopian space for three hours,” he addressed the intimate audience 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 with luck there’s an element of elevation that my audience brings home. And hopefully it stays with them for as long as they need it.”
