Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong have both experienced a meteoric rise in stardom thanks to their time on two critically acclaimed TV series. But being the star of The Bear or Succession is nothing compared to walking around a film festival with a music icon like Bruce Springsteen.
At the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday, White, who plays Springsteen in the new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Strong, who plays Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau, were joined by their real-life counterparts for a sold-out screening of the film. The screams were deafening when Springsteen came to the stage for the post-screening Q&A. Springsteen told the crowd he had finally signed off on a movie about his life because he considers it an “antibiopic” since it focuses closely on just two years of his life. “And I’m old and I don’t give a fuck what I do,” he added to laughs.
Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper, centers on the time when Springsteen was making his 1982 album Nebraska, while struggling with depression and challenging memories from his past. Springsteen and Landau worked closely with White and Strong as they prepared to play the characters, and were also present on set.
For White and Strong, recreating the steadfast friendship between these two was easy, but performing these characters in front of their real-life counterparts wasn’t. On the ground at Telluride, they spoke to Vanity Fair about Springsteen’s openness, relating to struggles with fame, and why Strong left Landau a voicemail as Landau.
Vanity Fair: What was it like the first time you met Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau?
Jeremy Allen White: We’d been in touch a little bit through text, and I had been preparing for a couple months before meeting him. But my first time meeting Bruce was at an empty Wembley [Stadium] in London. I went to soundcheck and got to watch him. After soundcheck, he saw me and called me over, and our first 20 minutes of talking were center stage at Wembley.
Were you nervous?
White: I was nervous, but I was with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson.
Wait, are they friends of yours?
White: No, I had had lunch at Emma’s house with another friend. Because of the generation that Emma and Pierce are from, I saw them react [to Bruce]. They’re such confident and charismatic people, and I saw them kind of get shy in his presence, which gave me, somehow, a little bit more confidence. So yes, I was nervous, but also, when you spend a little bit of time around Bruce, he’s so available and sort of generous and accommodating. It didn’t take long until there was a real ease in the conversation that happened pretty quickly.
Jeremy Strong: I was in Denmark last summer and drove a couple hours to where they were playing a show, and was sort of whisked into the complex of trailers and into a room with Bruce and Jon. And it’s interesting as an actor for me, before you’ve done the work and before you’ve entered into something, you’re totally outside of it. So I remember feeling like, I know somehow between now and X amount of months from now I’m going to be inside of this. But I met them before that was the case, so it was just kind of putting my toes in the water.
But it was a really profound experience. I’d never seen Bruce play before. Watching this ritual that he had with Jon before the show, which I subsequently learned is a ritual they have before every show—hundreds, maybe thousands of shows—where they sort of hold each other by his shoulders, kind of touch heads a bit of a benediction before Bruce goes out and plays the show. It gave me so much emotional information.
How did you come to understand the bond they have?
White: Talking to Bruce about his childhood, his relationship with his father. Jon came in and of course, yes, they’re like brothers, but also I feel like Jon kind of filled this father figure position as well. Bruce had spoken to me a lot about that. But then just witnessing them together, it was just there and is still there.
What is it like to go around this festival with them?
Strong: It’s surreal, and at the same time, we got quite used to them because they were on set a lot. I would say “ease” is really the word. He’s very open, at least for this process, he let us in.
White: I think he does have that openness. I was struck by Bruce in particular. Seeing the way he interacts with the world, just in Jersey or in the city, he does seem to somehow manage to have time for everyone. He really doesn’t shy away or hide away in the way that I would imagine most people who have been as successful and a public famous person for decade after decade after decade, he’s present for people.
How did you personally relate to where these characters were in their lives at the time?
White: It was actually upon our first meeting, I asked Bruce about [a scene in the film that captures] his panic attack at the county fair. He said he had this moment where he felt out of body and he was observing his own life, and he felt trapped outside of himself. I thought, “wow, that’s the scariest thing in the world.” That’s not a feeling I’ve had and in that fullest sense, but certainly trying to stay and remain present in my own life is something I’ve struggled with.
Once Bruce shared that story with me, I thought, “okay, I have a feeling here, and if I can stretch this out and kind of explore it, then I think I can have an honest portrayal of this man at this time in his life.”
Strong: Bruce in this movie is 32, and is entering this sort of stratospheric period as an artist. And that’s an overwhelming thing for anyone. So I felt like this is for a lot of reasons, this is a great role for Jeremy.
White: I think he was always very clear and confident in his work, but I think he felt very fraudulent in his life, and felt like he’d been caught lying or something. And sometimes that’s certainly something I’m familiar with as well.
Strong: Jon wasn’t someone that I was familiar with, but learning about him, getting to know him, coming to really love him, anyone would be lucky to have him as a guide through this life. But there was something that struck me in this essay he wrote called ”Confessions of an Aging Rock Critic.” He’s writing about passion. He’s writing about the dangers of becoming a professional and what happens when you just start to do things as a job. He said, “Without passion, there is no commitment without commitment, there is no energy, no drive, no intensity, no rigor, and ultimately no honesty.” And I relate to that. I’m always trying to find a reason to believe, which is what Bruce was for Jon, and which is what acting has been for me.
How did the two of you bond to play these lifelong best friends?
White: I found it so easy. I feel like things fell into place. We were very supportive of one another.
Strong: We probably are similar in the way we approach things. I think we’re both quite intuitive. We’re both fairly immersed in what we’re doing. I knew that he knew what he was doing. We both know everything about these guys as much as we possibly could. And also, to be honest, I felt what Jeremy has to do in this movie, it’s like he’s [tightrope walker] Philippe Petit walking across the most impossible chasm you can imagine in terms of the degree of difficulty of what he had to do. So I innately felt a protective sense for Jeremy—I wanted to be a bodyguard for him in the way that Jon wants to be a bodyguard for Bruce.
Had either of you had the experience before of playing a character and then that real person being on set?
Strong: When I did The Big Short I guess Vinny [Daniel] was around. He’s like six [foot] three, and this big Italian guy, I remember the first time I met him, he was like, “you’re the guy!?”
I remember in the beginning [on Deliver Me From Nowhere], I asked for a little bit of space before I was ready to have those guys be on set, just to get my sea legs. I remember calling Landau once I felt confident enough in the voice and leaving him a message as him. And then I was like, “okay, I’m ready.” A lot of what our job is, is about creating a sense of belief for yourself, and that sense of belief has to be almost invincible. So that sense of belief is challenged with “If I’m Jon Landau, who’s that guy over there?” So that was an interesting dynamic on this.
White: To find, I think the confidence to bring honesty to a situation that’s absurd, which is what we do, it really pokes holes in your story if you find Bruce or Jon in your eye line or something like that, you know what I mean?
Was Bruce on set when you had to do the performance numbers?
White: He was there. I remember the first time he was there for any of that sort of thing when I was singing, it was when I was recording Nebraska, and that felt particularly difficult, of course. I prerecorded a lot of stuff, and Bruce had heard me sing and we had spoken about it, he said, “you sound like me, but you’re making the song yours.” And I want that to be the way that we approach this entire process of making this film. I mean, Bruce, God bless him, he tried to make himself small, but that’s difficult to do. And even though he was on set, he really did give space, and he was very respectful the whole time.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
-
See All the Fashion, Outfits & Looks From the 2025 Venice Film Festival Red Carpet
-
The Venice Film Festival’s Most Fashionable Entrances Ever
-
How Trump’s ICE Crackdown Is Rattling the Hamptons
-
The Origin Story of Gavin Newsom’s Salty Online Trolling
-
The 20 Most Promising Movies This Fall
-
How a Death Row Murderer Exposed One of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killers (Part 1)
-
How a Death Row Murderer Exposed One of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killers (Part 2)
-
24 TV Shows We Can’t Wait to See This Fall
-
Zen and the Art of Being Jennifer Aniston
-
From the Archive: Growing Up Ivanka
The post Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong on How Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau Let Them In appeared first on Vanity Fair.
