“I saw it and thought: ‘I’m a fraud. This is not real. You are’: Jeremy Allen White, against the pressure of being Bruce Springsteen – Movie news

One day Scott Cooper received an email with the subject ‘Nebraska‘. The body wasn’t much more detailed. They asked him: “Are you a fan of Nebraskaby Bruce Springsteen?” His quick response – “who isn’t?” – confirmed him as the perfect director to bring Warren Zanes’ book to the big screen, Deliver Me from Nowherepublished in 2023. Cooper, director of titles such as the remarkable rebel heart (2009), I had been a fan of El Boss all my life, so receiving that message was like a gift from heaven.

He wrote a script based on Zanes’ work and took it upon himself to take it to Springsteen’s house and read it to him from the first word to the last while he was resting due to a peptic ulcer that had forced him to stop the tour. “It was very stressful reading my script to Bruce while I was reading all the dialogue, all the action, acting it out. Luckily, I was an actor early in my career, so that helped, but I was still very nervous. When we finished, Bruce started clapping and said, ‘I love it, let’s make this movie.“Declares Cooper in an interview with SensaCine.

This October 24, the film that excited Springsteen and that invited him to tell about a dark period in his life finally arrives in theaters. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere tells how the artist, after finishing his album tour The Riverhe locked himself in a house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, to rest and compose. Isolated from the world, the artist began to think about the ghosts of his past and dealt with the effects of a depression that he did not yet know he had. It was in this state of mind that he composed Nebraskaan album that he did not want to promote or tour. He didn’t even want his face to appear on the cover.

Bruce was at his lowest point, at his most vulnerable, at his darkest moment. This was before I knew I was suffering from depression, before I sought help. He has been very public in saying that he was looking into the abyss

“Bruce took me, my director of photography and my production designer to the original house where it was filmed Nebraska. He sat on a bed and explained to us where everything was in the room, how it felt, what the colors were. There were some photographs from the time, so we were able to recreate them with great detail and thoroughness. When he walked on set, he was like, “Oh my God, it feels like I was just here!” Cooper reveals.

Mission: find the perfect Bruce

It is not easy to find an actor capable of condensing the energy and charisma of someone like Bruce Springsteen. And, even less so, someone who can get into the tormented mind of the artist in his lowest moments. When they found Jeremy Allen White they realized that they had found the cornerstone of the film. “Jeremy, as an actor, is not afraid to delve into those emotions, to show that fragility: Bruce’s mental state, his crisis. Jeremy is a fearless young actor, and Bruce is very brave to allow me to show this very vulnerable and painful chapter of his life. “I’m grateful that we were able to do it in such a ruthless and honest way,” says the director.

But he didn’t say yes right away. “Not because it wasn’t exciting, but because it was about Bruce,” White admits in the film’s production notes. Later Scott Cooper revealed to him that Bruce had seen his work and thought he was the ideal candidate, but, above all, he realized that it was about interpreting a man in his creative process. “I think even without him on set, when I was preparing for the film, there was already a lot of pressure because he is so well known.. I feel like his relationship with his fans and the public is very specific. A musician’s relationship with his fans is very specific because they are always present,” Jeremy Allen White explains to SensaCine.

Bruce Springsteen was heavily involved in the production and attended the recordings frequently. Something that was intimidating for the leading actor and, at first, distracted him in his attempt to “create enough delusion to, for a brief moment, deceive yourself and believe that you are in a different situation.”

I was trying to portray this man and any delusion I might create would crumble because I would see him there and I would think, ‘Oh, I’m a fraud. This is not real. You are ‘

But time passed, Allen got used to his presence and interpreting this time in the singer’s life and realized that it was “a great support” that he was on set. “It finally gave me a lot of confidence, because I realized that in his presence there was a lot of freedom, not only for me, but also for Scott Cooper, Jeremy Strong and Stephen Graham, who played his father. That he was there to keep us honest“, emphasizes the interpreter, “looking back, I am very grateful that he was there so often. It would have been strange if he had been available or 45 minutes from his house while we were filming and he wasn’t there. It would have seemed bad. “It would have seemed like we were doing something without his permission.”

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere hits theaters this Friday, October 24.