Jeremy Allen White is starring as Bruce Springsteen in the brand-new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere – a role which required him to learn the guitar for the first time in his life.
Naturally, biopics about musicians mean actors have to go through the growing pains of learning guitar in the style of the musician they’re embodying in order to convey a faithful portrayal.
Timothée Chalamet–turned–Bob Dylan did it, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez waxed lyrical about the process, and now it’s White’s turn to look back on the trials and tribulations of learning guitar in preparation for becoming the Boss.
“I have a job where I kind of get to learn from these masters and learn these things,” he tells Hot Ones' Sean Evans.
“I think the physicality of wrestling, that stuff came a bit more naturally to me [referring to his role in the 2023 pro wrestling movie, The Iron Claw]. It was scary, but it was fun and physical. The training for the chef stuff [for his role in acclaimed series, The Bear], everything outside of the knife work, there was nothing that scary.
“But picking up a guitar for the first time when you've never held one before, and knowing in six months you have to be playing it, that was humbling and the most frightened I've been in my work life.”
Elsewhere in the interview, White gives his two cents on Nebraska, Springsteen's sixth studio album, which, like the stuff of rock ’n’ roll legends, was recorded on a four-track recorder in the bedroom of his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey – and whose conception is dramatized in the biopic.
“There's a real intimacy to Nebraska,” he observes. “I was a really big Springsteen fan and stuff. Prior to Nebraska, a lot of it had this Phil Spector sort of inspiration.
“There's a lot of this wall of sound idea where it was really, really grand, and the lyrics were still really specific and detailed and, you know, Dylan-esque, but sometimes the lyrics would get sort of overshadowed by the sound of music.
“With Nebraska, it's just Bruce and a guitar – very few chords. You feel like you're in the room with Bruce and the storytelling – while his storytelling has always been excellent – is kind of particularly beautiful and inspired in Nebraska.”
Elsewhere in the Springsteen biopic universe, White's guitar teacher, J.D. Simo, shared his own experience of being approached for the role – and the advice he gave the actor to play like the Boss.
