Winona Ryder opens up on her secret life in Minnesota, 'The Plot'

Squarespace’s Super Bowl commercial generated more buzz in Minnesota than Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes did on the football field thanks to Winona Ryder’s whirlwind tour of the town she was named after.

But missing from that ad, as well as just about every story ever written about the star, is her much stronger connection to the state, a period in the mid-’90s she tried lying low in Minneapolis, far from the harsh glare of the national spotlight.

Was the escape plan a success?

“It was and it wasn’t,” said the 48-year-old actress during a recent promotional tour for her latest TV series, “The Plot Against America,” an adaptation of the Philip Roth novel that imagines what would have happened if another famous Minnesotan, Charles Lindbergh, had become president. “I think back on it, I think about all the time I had to pretend I was fine and that I didn’t really care, when actually I did. It’s interesting. I can talk about it now.”

To fully appreciate Ryder’s state of mind during that period, you need to journey back 25 years ago, when Ryder was her generation’s Jennifer Lawrence.

Zoe Kazan, who was 5 when “Beetlejuice” came out, channeled her real-life awe of Ryder in playing her kid sibling in “Plot.”

“I think there’s a quality of hero worship that happens between younger sisters and older sisters, no matter their personalities or age difference,” said Kazan, whose credits include “The Big Sick.” “That’s very useful for me, considering how much I admire Winona.”

Back in the early ’90s, movies like “Heathers” and “Edward Scissorhands” were catnip to teens hungry for fare more grown-up than “Sixteen Candles.” Alt rocker Matthew Sweet had written a creepy lust song in her honor (“Could you be my little movie star?/ Could you be my long lost girl?”). Boyfriend Johnny Depp was sporting a “Winona Forever” tattoo on his right arm.

Backlash was inevitable.

The actress, fresh off her relationship with Depp, had met Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner at a 1993 taping of “MTV Unplugged.” By the end of the year, Ryder had played a political assassin in the band’s video for “Without a Trace” and decided to move into the red-hot rocker’s home in Minneapolis.

The change of address got almost no attention; the same couldn’t be said about the relationship.

Soul Asylum, which had been an underdog band since forming in the early ’80s, had an unexpected hit in 1992 with “Runaway Train.” That mainstream success, along with the lead singer’s high-profile romance, set the couple up for scrutiny.

Pirner, who has remained friends with Ryder since they broke up around 1997, declined a recent interview request.

Ryder said the Twin Cities press could be just as intrusive as national media — and hurtful, especially when they painted her as a vixen who had destroyed Pirner’s former relationship with a Minneapolis woman.

Those thoughts may have lingered after Ryder moved away.

While she continued to make movies for the next two decades, it was mostly secondary roles: cameoing as Spock’s mother in “Star Trek,” rolling her eyes at Adam Sandler in “Mr. Deeds,” locking lips with Jennifer Aniston on an episode of “Friends.”

But about five years ago, Ryder let it be known that she was ready to get back to meatier work — and open to doing television.

David Simon, best known for creating “The Wire,” jumped at the opportunity, casting her in a small but colorful role of a city council member in his 2015 miniseries, “Show Me a Hero.”

“Stranger Things,” which came out a year after Simon lured Ryder to the small screen, is the series that reintroduced Ryder as a pop culture icon. “Plot” is poised to become the project that does the same to her stature as an actress.

In the six-part series, she plays a lonely Jewish-American woman in Newark, N.J., whose infatuation with John Turturro’s Lindbergh-lovin’ rabbi blinds her from the fallout of the new president’s decision not to enter World War II and to establish diplomatic ties with Adolf Hitler.

By the time she realizes that anti-Semitic policies have destroyed her family, not to mention the country, it’s too late. The scenes in which she attempts to reconcile with her sister are as emotionally wrenching as anything she’s done in her storied career.