Jeremy Allen White Is Most Likely Playing Bruce Springsteen, and We're on Fire
Photographs: Getty Images; Collage: Gabe Conte
Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen: two short kings from the tri-state area best known for leading a motley, talented crew (one of whom is always wearing a signature bandana) in the pursuit of making great working class art while struggling with personal demons.
Rumor has it, White and Springsteen will also soon be maximizing their joint tank top slay. Not in a national plan to revitalize the Rust Belt—though there’s a free infrastructure idea for the powers that be—but in the form of a music biopic. According to Deadline, 20th Century Studios is financing the movie Deliver Me From Nowhere with White tapped to play the Boss. The film will be directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass, Antlers) and focus on Springsteen circa his 1982 album Nebraska, all based on Warren Zanes’s 2023 book, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.
White will unfortunately not be jumping straight from The Bear kitchen into wrangling the entire E Street Band, since Nebraska was a stark solo affair, recorded at home on a 4-track tape machine by a soul-searching Springsteen. "I just hit some sort of personal wall that I didn't even know was there," Springsteen said about the experience of writing the album. "It was my first real major depression where I realized, 'Oh, I've got to do something about it.'"
Besides their similar physicality, White has shown through his performances in both The Bear and The Iron Claw that he has the emotional chops to handle the Boss mining his dark night of the soul. (In a Snoopy notebook, of course.)
For better or worse, the music biopic has emerged as a curious proving ground for young stars in the last few years: Austin Butler as Elvis in Elvis, Jacob Elordi as Elvis in Priscilla, Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, Kingsley Ben-Adir in Bob Marley: One Love, and Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse in Back to Black. Springsteen has so far escaped the biopic treatment, but is on board with this one.
“Warren Zanes’ Deliver Me From Nowhere is one of the best books ever written about Bruce Springsteen and his music,” longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau said in a statement. “Bruce and I are thrilled that Scott Cooper has chosen to write and direct the film based on that book – we think he’s the perfect filmmaker for the job.”
Anyway, huge news for people who watched one episode of The Bear and thought, this guy should play Bruce Springsteen. For people who watched one episode of The Bear and thought, this guy should play Gene Wilder—better luck next time.
Originally Appeared on GQ
