Jeremy Allen White was scared of performing in front of Bruce Springsteen
Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce Springsteen in the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, and his lack of singing and guitar experience made performing in front of The Boss "daunting".
Jeremy Allen White found it "daunting" to perform in front of Bruce Springsteen.
The 34-year-old actor transformed into The Boss, circa 1982, in the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere - which is released in October - but Allen White's lack of musical experience made him think his singing was a "gamble".
Asked what it was like playing Springsteen - who was on set the "whole time" and "couldn't tell the difference" between his and The Bear actor's voice - on a recent episode of the WTF podcast, Allen White said: "It was very hard.
"I had not had a lot of experience or any experience singing, playing guitar, any of it. And so that was daunting, to say the least, in the beginning.
"And I didn't have - I mean, I had a lot of time, but I didn't have as much time as I would have liked. You never do, you know?
"I had about six months.
Maron chimed in: "What's fortunate with those songs, the guitar playing is not like [tricky]."
Allen White replied: "Exactly. It's not a lot of - yeah, the chords are pretty simple. There's not many of them.
"And a lot of the songs are the same. But the singing was a gamble."
The Shameless actor - who said the phrasing on the film's main record, 1982's Nebraska, was tough to get right - credited celebrity vocal coach Eric Vetro for helping him with his vocals.
Speaking about Vetro - who worked with Austin Butler, 34, in the 2022 Elvis Presley biopic, as well as Timothee Chalamet, 29, in the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown - Allen White said: "I worked with this guy, Eric Vetro, who's the guy.
"He helped Austin with the Elvis movie. He helped Timothee Chalamet with the Dylan movie.
"He's the go-to. And he works with a lot of amazing vocalists and real singers, and performers.
"But I got together with him just to like see what I can do, or see where we could get at least.
"And that's what you start with. You're just like, 'Can I sing? Can I see in key? Do I have a good ear? Is all this stuff working?'
"And then you try to find a little bit of that rasp, and then you try to get the - you start messing around with nasal ...
"I really have to give Eric credit because he was there to kind of - or I thought he was there to be like, 'You know, this is how you sing a song, this is how you make it sound good."
Allen White got "worked up" at times about sounding like Springsteen, and Vetro noticed he was not connecting to the music.
Allen White said: "But he would catch me not feeling connected to it and doing what, as an actor, I should have just been doing naturally, which is like, 'What are you talking about? What's going on?'
"It should have been simple, but I was so worked up with, 'How does it sound?' And sounding like Bruce, so that was like a breakthrough."
And when Springsteen realised Allen White's connection to his music, it released the actor's "anxiety".
He said: "I remember Bruce was great the first time he heard one of my pre-records, 'cause he was like, 'You sound like me, but you're singing the song, you're making the song your own. You've got your connection to the song.'
"And I think once he gave me that permission, not just with the music, but in a sense the entirety of the film, I feel like that released me a little bit from the anxiety."
