Jeremy Allen White: "I felt a real closeness to Bruce singing ‘My Father’s House’... It helped me find the centring of what I think Deliver Me From Nowhere is about ultimately."

It’s the morning after Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’s London premiere and its star Jeremy Allen White is looking remarkably chipper for a man who got to bed super late and may have enjoyed a celebratory half of shandy.

Hot Press’ VIP invite failed to arrive – An Post and Royal Mail have launched a joint inquiry to find out why – but a few days ago we were privy to a preview screening of the Nebraska biopic and can confirm that all the rave reviews you’ve been reading are spot on.

We’ll add to them by declaring that we left the cinema feeling that we know and understand Bruce infinitely better than when we went in.

His artistic vision, his integrity, his need to give and receive love, the demons he’s had to battle since childhood… they’re all laid bare on screen.

© 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

You really feel like you’re in the bedroom with Bruce as he gives birth, painfully at times, to his acoustic masterpiece – and can smell the beer ‘n’ sweat as he rips it up in the legendary Stone Pony dive bar.

As well as documenting 1981/’82’s turbulent events, black and white flashbacks explore the young Bruce’s relationships with his drunken and physically abusive father, Douglas, and his mother, Adele, who did her best to protect her only son.

Like the rest of us, White only got to see the scenes featuring newcomer Anthony Pellicano Jr, Stephen Graham and Gabby Hoffman, all of whom are superb, when the film was finished and found them deeply affecting.

“The three of them were so excellent together,” he marvels. “Matthew’s face and the life he has going on in his eyes. Him walking into the bar slowly to fetch his father. You see Stephen Graham’s hunched over shoulders – he’s a boulder of a man. I’ve been a fan of Stephen and Gabby Hoffman for a long time, obviously this is Matthew’s first thing. I was so affected by their work and also the difference in storytelling and camera, and how (screenwriter and director) Scott Cooper shot all those sequences.”

Emotions were also running high when, in perhaps Deliver Me From Nowhere’s most poignant moment, the adult Bruce makes peace with his dad in the dressing-room after an all guitars blazing stadium gig.

“Yeah, that was an emotional day on our set,” White nods. “Not just because of the weight of that scene and its importance in the film – it was the last week of shooting and there was a lot going on in the world at that time, like the fires back in Los Angeles. A lot of our crew’s homes were at risk.

“There was such respect and a community of caring for one another amidst that disaster. Then there was this space given to us by Scott who sadly did lose his home. He was so present and available and set the stage in this wonderful way. It was a gift to do that scene with an actor like Stephen Graham.”

In addition to him recording Nebraska on a portastudio in his Colts Neck, New Jersey bolthole, we also get to see The Boss embarking on a torrid love affair with diner waitress Faye who’s played with supreme nuance by Odessa Young. She's a composite character but indicative of how Bruce was emotionally flailing around at the time. The onscreen chemistry between the Australian actor and White is electric.

“She’s so good and one of those actors I really admire and am jealous of,” he reveals. “She’s got kind of one of those switches. I find that to be true of a lot of English and Australian actors. I’m not sure of her training but she can turn it on and turn it off. She’d be very, very chatty with me, kind of making me laugh between scenes. Then they’d say, ‘Action!’ and she’d drop right in. I’ve been an admirer of Odessa’s for a while and felt very lucky to get to do this thing with her.”

No mere hagiography, the film doesn’t shy away from how shoddily Bruce treats Faye and her young daughter, Hayley, who’s played by another star-in-the-making, Vienna Barrus.

Deliver Me From Nowhere also shows Bruce’s visceral reaction to watching The Night Of The Hunter and Badlands, Charles Laughton and Terence Malick’s respective murderous 1955 and 1973 masterpieces, which impacted hugely on the making of Nebraska. Can White remember his first time seeing them?

“I watched Badlands when I was probably fifteen,” he recalls. “I also had a very strong connection to that film. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are really unbelievable. There’s a sort of magic in that movie and the soundtrack and score are mesmerising. There’s a real romance to it and, yeah, it deeply affected me.

“I hadn’t seen The Night Of The Hunter for a long time so re-watched it. I’d forgotten the fear that film struck and how good those performances by Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters are. I also read Flannery O’Connor, so I did my homework!”

Elsewhere, we get to witness the depth and symbiotic nature of Bruce’s relationship with his manager Jon Landau who was the first to recognise how badly his charge’s mental health had deteriorated; how royally pissed off his record company were when instead of a radio-friendly unit shifter he presented them with a bunch of lo-fi bedroom songs; and how eerily White sounds like The Boss when he’s both talking and singing.

When did he feel that he’d nailed the latter?

“I’m not sure if I ever felt like I’d completely nailed it,” White confesses. “I found some confidence, yeah, in Nashville. We recorded a lot of the Nebraska music there. I felt a real closeness to Bruce singing ‘My Father’s House’. That was kind of a breakthrough performance – not just in the music aspect of the film, but it helped me find the centring of what I think Deliver Me From Nowhere is about ultimately.

“I remember singing ‘Born In The USA’ and thinking, ‘This is impossible, I’m never going to get close.’ It’s such a physical and demanding song to sing. That one knocked me out. I lost my voice, I had to lie down, I had a headache and all this stuff. But I felt a really great sense of accomplishment after getting it done, even though it made me a mess!”

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in cinemas now.