‘When did you get this good look?’: Bruce Springsteen on seeing Jeremy Allen White play him on screen | Springsteen: Save me from nowhere

forIt was like a chat with Jeremy Allen White, a “special guest” promised, and there was little surprise when Bruce Springsteen arrived on the small stage at Spotify’s offices in London on Tuesday night. The actor and rock star walked separately, but to the same entry music clip: the opening lines of the song Atlantic City, from Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska.

After all, it’s the making of this record that provides the focus for Scott Cooper’s new film Rescue Me From Nowhere, which sees White playing Springsteen at a critical moment in the singer’s life and career. Much of the evening’s conversation, moderated by Edith Bowman, focused on the complex process of becoming Bruce, and the inescapable specificity of art’s encounter with life.

Springsteen — throughout the picture depicting reptilian poise — spoke of first seeing White during soundcheck at Wembley Stadium, in the summer of 2024. “Jeremy was wearing all white, so he was easy to spot,” he recalls. “I just kind of waved at him on stage and we said hi.” White was already immersed in Springsteen’s music, watched hours of concert footage, and read a plethora of interviews and biographies. The Wembley show was an opportunity to understand Springsteen more as a live performer, and to discuss some of the details of his Nebraska period with the singer himself. Springsteen recalls preparing for the interrogation that never came: “I thought this guy was going to be really interested I “…” But in the end, “Jeremy was very prepared, and only asked a few questions,” he said.

“It was a scary role,” White said. He repeatedly referred to the vast amount of Springsteen information available, the amount of learning he had to undergo, and spoke of “the pressure I was putting on myself. Bruce called it ‘concentration’. I called it ‘anxiety that might turn into concentration’.”

Despite all the learning he did, it was through the music itself that he really connected to the part. “A lot of my energy was going into the musical element of the film,” he said. “[Scott] He wanted me to sing and play guitar, so I said, “I don’t do those things… Are you sure?” Cooper was adamant. White recorded his own versions of Springsteen songs. “I remember being in Nashville, at RCA [studio]“In the booth, singing Nebraska,” he said, “he finds some confidence…feels close to Bruce, in a way.” “When you read a great script, your job is very easy. And when you read Bruce’s words, it’s the same. Everything is fine there.

Springsteen also sent White a 1955 Gibson J-200 — the closest thing he could find to a guitar used in Nebraska, and “the best guitar you can learn on,” White says. He began guitar lessons via Zoom with session player JD Simo. “Hey, I’m so excited to learn guitar with you,” White recalls saying on their first meeting. “We don’t have time to learn to play the guitar,” Simo replied. “We have time to learn these five Bruce songs.”

Springsteen’s feelings about the film were initially less complicated. “I thought I was 76 years old and I didn’t really care what I was doing anymore,” he said. “Yes, go ahead. At my age, you take more risks, both in your work and in your life in general.” What helped, he said, was that Cooper was a “real blue-collar filmmaker” to make “the kind of movie I would be interested in.” “It’s not your standard musical biopic, but more of a character-driven drama with music.”

As the project picked up pace, it may have gotten weirder. Springsteen would visit the group often, apologizing to White every time he showed up. “It must be really weird with the stupid guy standing there,” he said. But he liked what he saw: “I’ve said this before, but I kept thinking, ‘Damn, when did I get this good look?’” In the seat next to him, White wags his finger and shakes his head.

Springsteen had few doubts about choosing White. He knew the actor was equipped to portray the most introspective time of his recording career. “I watched the bear, and how the camera followed his inner life,” he said. “And if you see him in a movie, it’s corny, but he’s a rock star.”

When he first saw White play himself, he was blown away by the actor’s style. “It was performing from the inside out, not just selecting items and wearing them like clothes,” he said. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but in a way it’s very connected to my story and myself.” He saw it as something closer to his own approach to songwriting—writing about people whose lives were very different from his own. “You have to find the part of you that is part of you.”

Most disturbing is the way the film forced him to reconsider difficult periods in his life. Rebuilding his ancestral home in Freehold, New Jersey — a house he once described as “the greatest, saddest retreat I ever knew” — was a strange thing. Springsteen described the number of times he visited the house in his dreams. “So, to be in that house again…it was a miracle and absolutely wonderful.”

Likewise, it was “very powerful” to see Stephen Graham in the role of his father – portraying his troubled early years, when he struggled with undiagnosed mental health problems and drank heavily, and the vulnerability and sweetness of his later years.

He told Springsteen that he saw an early show in the company of his sister, who held his hand the entire time. She was only one year younger than her brother, “and she remembered everything.” Finally she turned to him and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have that?”

Perhaps there was an echo of the feeling Springsteen hoped to give his audiences with his live performances. “You create a perfect world for three hours,” he told the small crowd in front of him last night. “It’s not a fantasy world. It’s a very reliable world. It has all the wonderful and terrible parts of life…but I hope there’s an element of the sublime that my audience takes with them. And I hope it stays with them as long as they need it.”