Extras! Extras! Springsteen ‘Nebraska’ movie seeks actors — and cars — in Asbury Park
Extras and vintage cars are needed for Jersey Shore scenes to be shot for the film starring Jeremy Allen White as The Boss.
Deliver Me From Nowhere, the forthcoming movie starring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen, needs extras for scenes to be shot in Asbury Park in December.
The film focuses on the Boss’ 1982 Nebraska era, when he recorded the stark, interior masterpiece in his makeshift bedroom studio in Colts Neck, N.J., under the austere influence of Terrence Malick’s 1973 movie Badlands and Flannery O’Connor short stories.
But turning this lone artistic adventure into a movie based on the 2023 book by Warren Zanes will require opening up the story and employing lots of extras for scenes to be shot both in Asbury Park in December and in East Rutherford, N.J., in January.
The Grant Wilfley Casting company is seeking would-be film stars of all ages and ethnicities and children 6 to 12 years old for scenes to be shot in Asbury Park on Dec. 9 through 13 and Dec. 16. In East Rutherford — a.k.a. the Meadowlands — the scenes will be filmed on Jan. 9 and 10 of next year.
The latter casting call makes it seem that the movie will carry forward from Nebraska to the 1984 release of and tour for Born in the U.S.A., when Springsteen and the E Street Band — with then new members Nils Lofgren and Springsteen’s future wife Patti Scialfa — played 10 shows at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford.
In addition to bodies, the movie — which is code-named “Husker” on the Wilfley website, short for “Cornhuskers,” the nickname for the University of Nebraska sports team — also needs period automobiles.
The Wilfley call is also on the lookout for cars in Asbury Park — where Springsteen returned to play the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in September — dating from the 1950s through 1980s. Payouts for the use of autos range from $400 to $650 per day. For actors who are members of SAG/AFTRA, pay is $216 for eight hours, and it’s $176 for 10 hours for nonunion members.
Deliver Me From Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper, is the second biopic about a rock legend to be filmed in part at the Jersey Shore and cast by Grant Wilfley this year. In May, scenes from the Timothée Chalamet-starring Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown, which comes out on Christmas Day, were shot in Cape May, standing in for Newport, R.I., in 1965.
Springsteen’s own documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band is streaming now on Hulu. Last week, on The Graham Norton Show, while promoting Road Diary, Springsteen said of Deliver Me From Nowhere: “It’s a lovely cast and I am involved a little.” The film also stars Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau and Odessa Young as the Boss’ love interest.
“This is not easy to do because you can’t do an imitation, you have to do a personal interpretation,” he said of White. “It’s difficult but he is a great actor and sings pretty good.”
Anyone interested in being cast as an extra should contact the casting agency at husker@gwcnyc.com. More information is available at gwcnyc.com/current-projects.