In a new interview published Thursday, Bruce Springsteen opened up about his experience on the set of the forthcoming music biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” and praised its star, Jeremy Allen White, for being “wonderfully tolerant” of his presence during production.
While speaking with Rolling Stone, Springsteen was asked what it was like to watch an actor play a younger version of him. “I’m sure it’s much worse for the actor than for me. Jeremy Allen White was very, very tolerant of me the days that I would appear on the set,” Springsteen told the outlet. “I said to him, ‘Look, anytime I’m in the way, just give me the look and I’m on my way home.’ So the days that I got out there, he was wonderfully tolerant with me being there.”
Based on Warren Zanes’ non-fiction 2023 book of the same name, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” follows Springsteen in the early 1980s during the conception of his beloved, widely revered album “Nebraska.” Written and directed by “Crazy Heart” filmmaker Scott Cooper, the film explores how Springsteen’s recording of “Nebraska” came at a time in his life when he was both grappling with the traumas of his past and struggling to adapt to his newfound success and fame.
White stars in the film as Springsteen, leading a cast that also includes Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau, Springsteen’s longtime manager; Stephen Graham as Douglas Springsteen, the musician’s troubled father; Marc Maron as producer Chuck Plotkin; David Krumholtz as record label executive Al Teller; Johnny Cannizzaro as guitarist Steve Van Zandt; Paul Walter Hauser as music engineer Mike Batlan; and Odessa Young as Faye, Springsteen’s love interest in the film.
The first trailer for “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” which was released online Wednesday morning, teased the film’s exploration of both its subject’s post-fame success in the early ’80s and his difficult childhood. In his interview with Rolling Stone, Springsteen himself admitted that there was “some unusualness” involved in watching the film get made and revealed that he purposefully avoided watching the making of some scenes.
“There’s some unusualness to it because the movie involves, in some ways, some of the most painful days of my life,” Springsteen said. “Some of the scenes I wasn’t at. If there was a scene coming up that was sometimes really deeply personal, I wanted the actors to feel completely free, and I didn’t want to get in the way, and so I would just stay at home.”
“If Scott Cooper, the director, wanted or needed me there for something, I would try to make it,” Springsteen noted. “But I was on tour in Canada for the whole first month or so of the filming, and so I was really out on the road quite a bit and working at that time.”
The musician ultimately had nothing but good things to say about those involved in the movie, and especially its onscreen performers. “It was a great project, and Jeremy and Jeremy Strong were both fantastic, terrific in it as were all the other actors,” Springsteen added. “Stephen Graham plays my dad, and he’s out of this world, but everybody that was engaged in the film, they were all tremendous.”
“Deliver Me From Nowhere” hits theaters on Oct. 24.
