When it came time to cast someone to play Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” there was no option other than Jeremy Allen White — and that’s coming from The Boss, himself.
“I’d been watching ‘The Bear’ and there was some sort of physical resemblance, some sort of the way he carried himself,” the legendary musician shared in a 20th Century Studios featurette. “And then there was the way the camera read his internal life. That was really essential. I just said, ‘This is the guy.’ I didn’t have a No. 2.”
“Two of the things that Jeremy has that I thought were critical is humility and swagger,” director Scott Cooper agreed. “They don’t teach swagger at Juilliard — you either have it or you don’t — and Jeremy has it. And he has this kind of quiet confidence that Bruce has that I thought would allow him to perfectly embody all of the complexities that I needed.”
The “Bear” actor stars alongside Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham and Odessa Young in the musical biopic. It was ultimately a cast and crew that original book author Warren Zanes called “pure pipe dream stuff.”
“Scott called me and he told me a little bit about the story, that we wanted to make a film that is about the musician, but it’s a snapshot, this period of Bruce’s life,” Allen White recalled.
“Jeremy has this kind of natural, lived-in presence, apart from what I see as a physical resemblance of Bruce in 1981 and ’82,” Cooper continued. “So much so that Bruce’s wife Patti, when she saw him on set, said, ‘Oh my god, Bruce. Looks like when I first met you.’”
Check out the interviews with Springsteen, Allen White, Cooper and Zanes, as well as producers Scott Stuber, Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, in the video above.
After hitting theaters in October, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” will be available to digitally rent on-demand on Tuesday.
