Asbury Park is a Jersey beach town with soul, history and harmony, not to mention voice. Bruce Springsteen's presence is still felt in his old haunts – the Stone Pony, the Miracle Bar, Madame Marie. The city's welcome mat is the iconic boardwalk where we met Jeremy Allen White. “I think there’s still a lot of romance here,” White said, thinking about his hometown.
“Do you feel the same way about Brooklyn?” I asked.
“Yes, yes. I always feel at home there.”
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If this boy from Brooklyn had come here, say, three years ago, he might have been just another tourist. But no more. His role as a talented but jaded chef in the award-winning FX series “Bear” has made the 34-year-old actor one of Hollywood's hottest commodities.
I said, “At first I thought if you just read the script, it would just be a story about a sandwich shop.”
“It was hard to explain,” White said, “and it sounded like this, you know? Yeah, it's like, baby, he's coming back, he's a chef and he's kind of opening a sandwich shop. And I saw my friends try to be polite and say: Oh that sounds great You know?”
As a result, he received almost all the awards: Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, Critics' Choice. His two young daughters call them “winner's cups.” “They like them, they enjoy it, but they're also very honest, and it's like, Why do you need all this? White said.
Back on the Jersey Shore, it's not past accolades that matter. These are the ones who might come down the Jersey Turnpike to see White perform as Springsteen himself.
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And yes, this is indeed White's voice. He said, “If you're going to do something, to do it right, you have to perform until you're exhausted. Because he continues until he can’t go any more.”
“Everyone has their own idea of Bruce Springsteen. And I think the way I approached it in the beginning was: How can I make everyone happy? This is a stupid idea. This is impossible”.
“Was there a moment when you thought to yourself, Yes, I understood that. I can do it“I asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” White replied. “There were moments when I gained confidence, but I always wanted more, I wanted more time, I wanted to go deeper.”
Springsteen knew about White before the film came out. He saw and admired the emotional complexity of his work, and Springsteen knew that it was necessary for whoever played him to have it. White said: “Bruce has gone on record saying that I have no problem performing on stage for three hours. It's easy for me. I know exactly who I am on stage. You know, I have problems with the other 21 hours.”
“Did you know any of this before you really went deep?” I asked.
“I mean, I was quite familiar with his music and, you know, I understood his depth, and I understood, you know, that we were dealing with a man who had looked beyond the edge before,” White said. “But no.”
The film Springsteen: Deliver Me Out of Nowhere, based on the book of the same name, chronicles the making of the 1982 album. “Nebraska.” Some say Springsteen is his best character, but he himself may actually have been his worst.
In his 2016 autobiography, Born to Run, he describes an emotional breakdown while attending a Texas county fair shortly after Nebraska was completed:
“I just took a perfect swan dive into my abyss; my stomach is flushed and I go down, down, down. I just feel the need to root myself down.” somewherebefore I go on air.”
White said: “I asked him, what is this panic? Do you know what this fear is inside of you? And he said, “I had a moment where I felt like an outsider and an observer in my life.”
I asked, “Have you ever struggled with mental illness yourself?”
“Yes, of course,” White said. “When he told me about it, about that feeling of being an observer of your own life, it was very familiar to me. I remember when I started playing there was a lot of, I think, chaos and confusion, just a lot going on. I couldn't focus on myself. And I found acting, and I found some peace, and I found some focus.”
White has benefited from this emotional failure for as long as he can remember, even during his time on TV crime dramas when he was looking for certain things rather than just a job. “Yeah, you know, I was very lucky, I was a kid, so my first agents were a little confused and upset that I had any standard of what I would audition for,” he said. “I had never done anything before when I was 13 and they were like: Just go to the auditionYou know?”
One of these auditions landed him on Shameless. For 11 seasons, he played the bad guy, older brother and wiseguy Lip Gallagher.
His wild hair and blue eyes earned him rank among the so-called “rodent people,” a term used to describe some of the most physically desirable things a person can be these days. His Calvin Klein underwear ads certainly helped.
Before leaving the shore, we stopped at the Stone Pony, where White was trying to recreate Springsteen's early glory days in a film.
“Bruce was there for what felt like days, and he came out and kind of introduced me to the audience, so he gave them to me warmed up,” White recalled. “They made me feel like a star for three and a half minutes. And then the first commercial said, “Cut,” and they went silent. And I remembered that I No Bruce Springsteen, I'm just an actor!
A guy from Brooklyn plays a guy from Jersey – they both seem to understand each other, and neither of them changes anything.
White said: “The trip is fun, but I'm, you know, overwhelmed. I just want to work with people I admire and be able to continue doing what I love. That's what's important to me.”
I asked, “So if all the fame and success ended after this movie, you would feel like…?”
“Can I still work?”
“Yeah.”
“Then yes, I'm fine. Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely”.
WEB EXTRAS: Extended Interview – Jeremy Allen White (Video)
To watch the trailer for Springsteen: Deliver Me Out of Nowhere, click on the video player below:
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The story was produced by Sarah Kugel. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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