Jeremy Allen White: ‘I had to forget about Bruce and approach him as a young musician on the brink of stardom’

Since 1986, Bruce Springsteen had rejected every offer to make a movie about his life, until the end of 2023, when director Scott Cooper sat down next to writer Warren Zanes in front of Springsteen and Jon Landau, the singer’s manager and confidant. Zanes is the author of Deliver Me From Nowhere, a book that recounts the months in which the rocker, after the smash hit success of The River (1980), struggled to avoid being devoured by depression and to maintain his creative purity despite pressure from his record label, a battle (a purely artistic one) that he would win with the release of Nebraska (1982). Cooper wrote the script while Zanes was finishing the book. And thus there sat the quartet, deciding whether Springsteen’s refusal to sanction a biopic would be reversed or not.

Obviously, if Cooper and actor Jeremy Allen White are currently promoting the film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere in Madrid, which opens in theaters on October 24, it’s because they obtained his approval. “Bruce had read the script, and he asked me to do a reading with Landau and Zanes,” Cooper recalls. “And you know what? I had no idea what would happen. Luckily, I was an actor, and I used those tools in the reading. I can’t tell you if I did it well, but when it was over, Bruce stood up, applauded, and said, ‘Fantastic. Let’s make the movie.’”

At Cooper’s side, White, the star of the hit television series The Bear, who is much more reserved with his words, simply smiles. White came onto the project later, and built his performance without makeup or props. And certainly not imitations. Except when it comes to the songs, which the actor tackled after months of training with singing coaches to produce a version that is very faithful to Springsteen’s voice in the early 1980s.

“The effort was worth it,” says White, who also felt Springsteen’s shadow constantly: the musician visited the set on numerous occasions. “From the outset, it was clear to me that if I wanted to embody Bruce Springsteen well, I had to forget about Bruce, the image we have of him, and approach him as a young musician on the brink of stardom, a guy who is going through depression and at the same time decides that his next album will be exactly how he wants it to be; who hopes to unravel his fears, born of his family background, and who at the same time doesn’t want to lose himself on his path to the future, whether success comes or not.”

Yeah, but how did he handle Springsteen on set? “Well, it was great, because it helped us check a lot of details that — no matter how well documented you are — only he could clarify. For example, he recorded the songs on Nebraska in his bedroom. Did he play sitting on the bed? On the floor? But it’s true that at first I thought he was coming to judge us, and I soon discovered that what he really wanted was to show us his support. At least, that’s how I experienced it.”

Cooper notes that Springsteen confessed to them that the song he finds most difficult to perform is Born in the U.S.A.: “He told us that when he puts it on his set lists, he knows he has to start getting ready for it during the previous song. That you can only approach it by believing in it, that it’s a song that demands a lot of effort.”

The incredible thing isn’t that Springsteen managed to release an album as dark as Nebraska against all odds, but that he also composed some of the hit songs that he would later compile on Born in the U.S.A., such as I’m On Fire or the title track of the 1984 album, having decided not to put them on a painful, somber record that delves deep into the evils of the U.S. and of human nature, completely devoid of orchestral flourishes: you only hear Springsteen on Nebraska. ““All I can see in this,” says the actor, “is honesty and truth. Like now, when he talks about Trump while everyone else is anxious.”

During shooting, there were never any red lines from Springsteen. But what about them? “As an artist, being true to Bruce,” Allen notes. “At first, I was overwhelmed by the weight of the legend. Then I realized I couldn’t please everyone.“ Cooper adds an anecdote, which is hinted at in the relationship between Landau (played by Jeremy Strong) and Springsteen as depicted on screen: ”Jon asked me if I was aware that Bruce controls everything. The order in which the songs appear on an album or in a concert, the album covers, his appearances... Because for half a century, he’s been at the wheel, deciding every step. And that the film was the first product related to him that he wasn’t going to control. So I focused on getting the tone right, on not betraying an idea: that Nebraska was made in a minimalist way and, therefore, a film about that period had to follow that guideline, not be spectacular.”

If there’s ever been a musician who fought against being sacralized, it’s Springsteen. So, demystifying on screen someone who’s already been demystified in the public eye hasn’t been the card Cooper (responsible for Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, and Hostiles, among other films) has chosen to play. Because it would be pointless. “True, the norm is to propose biopics that straddle the line between exposing the human being and listening to their greatest hits one after another, as if you were putting coins into a jukebox,” the filmmaker begins. “We refused to do that. Musicians are often expected to seek even greater fame. And Bruce had the courage to look inside himself and reject that, opting for the most unexpected route. Instead of continuing to build his iconography, his myth, he did the opposite. And he exposed his feelings. So we follow his lead: I hope that viewers see a human being who is approachable and flawed, rather than an icon.”

Still, given its genre, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is just another of the immense wave of musical biopics released in recent years. What’s behind this trend? White responds: “I’m not sure why, beyond the fact that there is indeed an audience for these films. I always find it very useful that they focus on just one particular period of someone’s life. Besides, in our case, it’s the most important period of his life, and the album he’s most proud of. I hope people watch it as if they were at his home, by his side, and let themselves be carried away by the river that is Bruce.”

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