The “Weirdo” Next Door: Winona Ryder Shows Up in A$AP Rocky’s “Punk Rocky” Video

While many might have been worried that it would take another minute to see Winona Ryder in something after the series finale of Stranger Things (not that she had much screen time in said final episode), just under a week after the show’s conclusion, Ryder turned up in, of all things, an A$AP Rocky music video. More specifically, “Punk Rocky,” the first single from his much anticipated fourth album, Don’t Be Dumb. Evidently, A$AP is taking that title seriously in that it’s a shrewd reentry into the music industry’s consciousness to have a video with such a “star player” in it (not that he didn’t also have one in 2022’s “D.M.B.”). And, considering his absence has almost matched his long-time girlfriend Rihanna’s (it’s been eight years since the last A$AP Rocky album came out, and ten years since the last Rihanna one), it’s no wonder A$AP wanted to make a big splash with his first visual.

Co-directed by Folkert Verdoorn, Simon Becks and Rocky himself (labeled as “a.k.a. The Three Musketeers”), Ryder’s face is the fourth to appear (after A$AP repeats, “Shut the fuck up” three times), followed by the curious credit, “Introducing Winona Ryder.” And what she’s “introduced” as is, of course, a slightly “offbeat” neighbor living next door to mischief-making (or “punk,” if you prefer) A$AP Rocky. “Offbeat” not just because Ryder is perennially associated with her Tim Burton work (and yes, that’s how Rocky, a fan of Burton’s, became familiar with Ryder), but because she’s eating blackberries with red cleaning gloves on. From there, the directors cut to a disgruntled neighbor (of the “muscle man” variety) before revealing the house next door, featuring prominent, Burton-esque (a synonym from “kooky”) lettering that reads, “PUNK ROCKY.” The garage then opens to reveal a mosh pit, of sorts, still going on from, presumably the night before.

Soon enough, A$AP and a few other “revelers” are being smashed against the hood of a police car. And it is during this moment that A$AP majorly channels Madonna in two ways: 1) he’s wearing an eyepatch with an “X” on it, which was a key part of Madonna’s Madame X persona circa 2019 and 2) the wound on his eye (from being kicked in the face in the garage) looks like a mouth and proceeds to start singing, “Sometimes I forget what love is” (a sentiment that doesn’t bode well for Rihanna). This being a very reminiscent-of-the-“Bedtime Story”-video moment. As the police car then drives away, Ryder remains seated in her front yard eating the blackberries, rather unfazed by all the chaos that just went on. Maybe because A$AP wasn’t actually arrested (for once—after all, he has a somewhat storied history of arrests, including ones that came after a Sean Penn-esque fight with photographers in 2012, a “kerfuffle” in Sweden in 2019 and charges of assault with a deadly weapon in 2022 [for a shooting that took place in 2021]).

Instead, he goes back to his “garage band,” singing the chorus into the megaphone as a Lynchian (rather than Burtonian) sort of character stops in front of the house with his oxygen tank (it’s very Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, of course) to observe. After which Ryder, ostensibly “moved” by the music (and not at all by A$AP’s “winsome” looks), moseys over with a plate of cookies in hand—at which time the viewer can see the full glory of her Beavis and Butt-Head t-shirt (with the eponymous characters dressed in their own punk guises). And as she continues to wave “coquettishly” at A$AP, who gives her a genuine smile in return, the following lyrics soundtrack the scene: “I wanna fall in love, don’t want no broken heart/Don’t wanna grow apart.” The two then start dancing together in the driveway as Rocky sings, “I thought I fell in love, I thought she felt it too/I thought I was in love, she just another fluke/I thought you was the one, I guess you just the two.” So one supposes it’s no surprise that Ryder is back at her own house in the next scene, with things not having really “worked out” with Rocky—at least not as a romantic prospect.

And maybe this is for the best, since the Muscle Man neighbor returns to start beating the shit out of A$AP and his crew (unable to tolerate loud music, as is the trope of such neighbors in “white picket fence” neighborhoods). He even goes so far as to take a mailbox out of the ground and wield it as a weapon to wallop Rocky in the face. Soon, the cops return and, this time, it ain’t just a warning, with Rocky thrown into the back of the police car and taken to jail.

While waiting around in the lock-up, not only does Rocky’s eye wound-as-mouth get another opportunity to have its “Bedtime Story” moment, but him wearing his signature curlers in his hair also reminds one of Lady Gaga’s stint in prison in the “Telephone” video (albeit with Coke cans for curlers instead). As for his one phone call, he uses it to summon Neighbor Ryder to bail him out, who comes promptly a-runnin’ with a bag of cash (and once again wearing her red rubber cleaning gloves). For while the dynamic between them isn’t sexual, it’s friendly enough for Ryder to want to see him perform a gig as loudly as he can next door, which is exactly what he does once she gets him out. Appropriately timed for him to sing the line, “You want the last laugh, look, now the joke’s on you” as one of the other neighbors is shown being woken up in their bed by the Project X-esque house party going on at Rocky’s.

Amidst the crowd is Ryder wearing a headscarf with an allover print of hair curlers (an homage to “Rocky style”) and a shirt that says “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.” Also present is none other than Danny Elfman on drums, yet another nod to A$AP’s Burton love. Then, as though to add to the absurdism of it all, a final scene of Rocky tending to his eye wound in a bathroom as one of his presumable chums is thrown through the window leads to him jumping out another one with a gun in hand, at which point, the viewer sees that the bathroom belongs to Ryder, who was in the shower while Rocky was looking at himself in the mirror (again, it’s a dubious relationship that seems to walk a fine line between friends and lovers). Then, as if to allude to his “assault with a deadly weapon charge,” he runs through the Edward Scissorhands-esque neighborhood shooting his gun at an unseen figure.

Naturally, the video ends with Rocky once again handcuffed in the back of police car, only his reaction to the arrest this time is far more, let’s say, explosive. Leading one to question if Ryder will ever see her “punk” neighbor again.