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Jeremy Allen White admitted that one daunting aspect of playing legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen in the 2025 biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere was having to tackle his iconic music.
Fortunately, “The Boss” quickly put the two-time Emmy Award winner at ease while White was preparing to shoot writer-director Scott Cooper’s musical drama.
“Obviously, I’m never gonna reach Bruce’s level of singing but even to be an artist and to have a young actor performing your music, ego has to be involved somewhere, no matter how evolved you are,” White confessed to BBC Radio 1 in October 2025. “The fact that he was so appreciative … it was just a really beautiful moment for me in the process.”
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere was adapted for the big screen from author Warren Zanes’ acclaimed 2023 book of the same name, which chronicled the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame inductee battling with his record label during the making of his 1982 album Nebraska.
Keep scrolling for more information on how White prepared to cover some of Springsteen’s most beloved songs.
Did Jeremy Allen White Actually Sing in ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’?
Yes, Jeremy Allen White did re-record the vocals for classic Springsteen tracks such as “Atlantic City” and “Reason to Believe” for Deliver Me From Nowhere. According to the actor, his training was so intense that he even blew out his voice after belting out “Born in the U.S.A.”
“[Bruce] had years and years of playing in rooms like this and in s****y P.A. systems and really like testing his voice and training, and I didn’t have that,” he told People. “I didn’t have that time, so I needed to shout and that took me out. I remember recording ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ and losing my voice for a couple days.”
White has dedicated himself to extensive training for his transformative roles in the past. Before shooting 2023’s The Iron Claw, White and costar Zac Efron trained with real professional wrestlers in order to authentically portray the legendary Von Erich Brothers tag team.
What Did Jeremy Allen White Say About Singing in ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’?
White admitted to People in October 2025 that he gave serious thought to the task of recording Springsteen’s music when he was approached for Deliver Me From Nowhere.
“My first thing was, can I perform these songs with a little bit of honesty? Can I do justice to the lyrics?” he admitted.
Once he signed on for the project, White discovered that it was not necessary to try to completely replicate Springsteen’s vocal performances.
“Hopefully if there’s enough truth in this music, whether it sounds exactly like Bruce or not, people will connect with it,” White said. “We kind of got into trying to get closer to Bruce’s voice, but then there’s certain songs like ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ where there was nothing that could have prepared me.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 1, White shared Springsteen’s first reaction to some of his greatest hits being re-recorded for the biopic.
“Kind of in the beginning of the process, I was recording the music and he didn’t know,” White recalled in October 2025. “I hung out with him at Wembley and we met there and it was lovely … He didn’t know the preparation I was doing.”
White explained that the pair were kept “separate” in the early stages of the project so he could develop his characterization of Springsteen. They finally met up in Nashville, Tennessee, so Springsteen could hear the recordings.
“That’s where I really found some confidence and Bruce listened to those songs,” White remembered. “He called me a couple of days later and he said, ‘Listen, you sing very well. You sound like me but not just like me. You’re making the songs your own.”
White described that validation from Springsteen as a “beautiful moment of permission” and praised him for showing “such a tremendous amount of grace.”
What Did Bruce Springsteen Say About Jeremy Allen White’s Performance in ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’?
Deliver Me From Nowhere star Marc Maron — who plays Springsteen’s producer Chuck Plotkin in the biopic — revealed that White’s vocals were “amazing” enough to fool the rocker.
“I think he fooled Bruce too, from what I hear,” Maron told The Hollywood Reporter in October 2025. “Bruce couldn’t tell on a couple of songs whether it was him or Jeremy — seriously, I’m not making that up. Bruce said that, there you go. I definitely heard that on set, I’m not talking out of school there.”
For his part, Springsteen said that watching White on The Bear convinced him that the actor could capture the “emotional complexities” he experienced at that point in his life. He personally sent the actor a 1955 Gibson J-200 guitar in order to replicate his experience recording the Nebraska album.
“His performance was totally from the inside out, not just picking elements and wearing them like clothes,” he told The Guardian. “It’s a non-imitative performance, but somehow it greatly relates to my story and myself.”
What Did Bruce Springsteen’s Biographer Say About Jeremy Allen White’s Performance?
Springsteen biographer Warren Zanes exclusively told Us Weekly at the AFI Fest in Hollywood, California, in October 2025 that he was convinced White was right for the Deliver Me from Nowhere role after seeing him in The Bear.
“I went deeper on The Bear, went back to The Bear, and I was just watching it,” Zanes recalled. “It was that that made me say, ‘It has to be him,’ but by that time, he was already cast.”
Zanes admitted he had anxiety over his book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska being turned into a movie until he saw White and costar Jeremy Strong — who plays Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau — on set together.
“Once you get to a movie set, there’s hundreds of people. It’s in the hands of not one person, it’s a team. Initially, it was unnerving,” Zanes told Us. “There was one day in particular where it was Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, [their] first time as scene partners. I stopped worrying from that day forward.”
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How Did Jeremy Allen White Physically Transform for ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere’?
White naturally has blue eyes so one major element of his physical transformation was using brown contact lenses to match Springsteen.
White confirmed to Vogue that he took his physical transformation into Springsteen even beyond using contacts by wearing “a couple of pieces” from the musician’s actual wardrobe.
“There’s a blue flannel shirt which I wear a few times, and then my favorite piece, which was this sort of tattered white Triumph shirt that I wore for a scene at the end, when I go to see a therapist,” he recalled. “I thought, If there’s ever a time to try and feel as close to Bruce as possible, it’s that.”
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