Bruce Springsteen opened up about watching his new biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere, come together, calling it a “great project,” in a new interview with Rolling Stone, while also acknowledging that “the movie involves, in some ways, some of the most painful days of my life.”
Deliver Me From Nowhere centers around the creation of Springsteen’s seminal 1982 acoustic record Nebraska, which he made amid a bout of depression following the success of 1980’s The River. As a new trailer for the film recently teased, the film also digs into Springsteen’s sometimes tumultuous childhood, in particular his complicated relationship with his father, Douglas.
Springsteen missed the first month or so of filming because he was on tour, and after getting off the road he tried to schedule his set visits wisely. He said if director Scott Cooper “wanted or needed me there for something, I would try to make it.” Other times, he chose to stay away because he wanted to give the actors space to work.
“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,” he said.
In particular, Springsteen didn’t want his presence to put unnecessary pressure on the actor playing him, Jeremy Allen White. Asked what it was like to watch an actor play him, Springsteen replied, “I’m sure it’s much worse for the actor than me,” adding that White was “very, very tolerant of me the days that I would appear on set.”
He continued, “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. And it was just fun. It was enjoyable.”
Springsteen had high praise in general for the film. He said White and Jeremy Strong, who plays Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau, “were both fantastic, terrific in it as were all the other actors. Stephen Graham plays my dad, and he’s out of this world, but everybody that was engaged in the film, they were all tremendous.”
Along with White, Strong, and Graham, Deliver Me From Nowhere stars Paul Walter Hauser as Springsteen’s recording engineer Mike Batlan, David Krumholtz as Columbia Records executive Al Teller, Marc Maron as producer Chuck Plotkin, and Gaby Hoffman as Springsteen’s mother, Adele. Odessa Young will also appear as Faye, a love interest of Springsteen’s at the time.
Deliver Me From Nowhere is set to open Oct. 24.
