Julia Stiles Honors Heath Ledger With ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ Reunion on DWTS

Stiles turns a ballroom routine into a reunion

The strongest part of Julia Stiles’ tribute to Heath Ledger was its personal scale. On Tuesday’s live dedication episode of Dancing with the Stars, she returned to the film that made them co-stars, bringing much of the 10 Things I Hate About You cast into the ballroom. The choice connected a televised dance to a memory shared by the people who made the 1999 comedy, rather than asking the choreography to carry the tribute on its own. Stiles and dance partner Ezra Sosa performed a contemporary routine to Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” the song Ledger’s Patrick Verona serenades Stiles’ Kat Stratford with in the film. Sosa called the choice a “no brainer.” Before they danced, Stiles explained that her reaction during the original scene was genuine: Ledger had charmed her, and working with him had felt easy. That detail gives the song a personal history beyond its role in the movie. For viewers, the performance could evoke a famous scene; for Stiles, it was also tied to the person standing across from her during its filming. [WATCH | Stiles and Ezra Sosa perform on DWTS] The routine ended with Stiles alone on the ballroom floor as her character’s famous monologue played and a photo of her and Ledger appeared overhead. She placed a rose beneath the image. Then Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, Susan May Pratt and Andrew Keegan—her former co-stars—joined her, arms linked. The sequence shifted the focus from a single performer’s remembrance to a group’s shared past, giving the reunion a quiet physical presence.

A film memory, carried into the present

“I really wish that I could pick up the phone” and tell Ledger that people still care about the film, Stiles said in the video before the performance. She wanted to bring back his “lust for life.” Speaking with host Julianne Hough afterward, she said the dance made her think about who she was at 17 and who she is now. Ledger, she recalled, brought out the light in people, led the group and made everyone else shine. Her remarks held two kinds of remembrance together: grief for a friend who’s gone and affection for the younger self who knew him. That reunion is more than a nostalgia cue. Stiles’ words and the other actors’ presence gave the performance a warmth a routine alone couldn’t supply; the emotional point was visible in who gathered around her after the music stopped. This is more significant than it looks. A familiar scene can be replayed, but the people who experienced it together can add context that a clip or quotation can’t provide. (And this is the part most people overlook.) The cast’s presence didn’t explain Ledger’s life; it showed how his memory still sits within the relationships formed around the film. Sosa and Stiles earned nines across the board, their highest score of the season. The scores offered a measure of how the judges responded to the performance, though they can’t capture what the tribute meant to the people onstage. That gap matters in a competition built around technique and scoring: some routines carry a personal purpose that doesn’t fit neatly on a scorecard. The evening gave Stiles room to make that purpose plain. Ledger died of an accidental overdose in 2008, aged 28. That same year, he received a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Stiles said she remains sad despite her many good memories of him. The tribute didn’t try to resolve that sadness with a triumphant ending; the rose beneath his photograph and Stiles’ words left space for loss alongside gratitude. A tender moment. And a public one.

Another cast reunites to honor a mentor

The episode featured other tributes, too. Tatyana Ali dedicated her dance to James Avery, her late Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-star, with fellow cast member and DWTS host Alfonso Ribeiro joining her onstage. Ali and her partner, Jan Ravnik, danced a Viennese waltz to Nancy Wilson’s “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am”; Ali recorded her own version for the performance. Avery, who played Uncle Phil and died in 2013, was “a father figure to all,” Ali said. She added that the performance wouldn’t have been right without Ribeiro there. Ali’s tribute echoed Stiles’ in its emphasis on connection: the dance mattered partly because someone who shared the original experience was there to take part. The details were different—Ali sang her own version of the song, while Ribeiro joined her onstage—but both performances made the past present through the people who’d lived it. If you're working in television, that’s a useful reminder of what reunion segments can offer when they’re grounded in genuine relationships: a reason for familiar faces to be together, beyond recognition alone.

What the tributes leave with viewers

If the night left viewers reaching for the crying emojis, the show knew which memories it was asking them to revisit. The emotional pull came from recognizable songs and scenes, but also from the performers’ accounts of what those moments meant to them. That said, nostalgia can do only so much. The strongest parts of these tributes came when the people involved added their own perspective, rather than relying on a well-known clip to supply all the feeling. Stiles’ closing reference to 10 Things I Hate About You made that connection explicit. As Kat says of Patrick near the end of the film, they don’t hate it—not even a little. The line gives viewers a familiar way back into the story, while Stiles’ performance makes clear that her memories of Ledger extend beyond the film itself. What this means for you as a viewer is simple: the movie may be the entry point, but the tribute’s real subject is the affection that endured after filming ended. Related: [Julia Stiles had her Save the Last Dance moment on Dancing with the Stars](/news/entertainment/julia-stiles-save-the-last-dance-sean-patrick-thomas-ezra-dwts-9.7380344) · [Dancing with the Stars announces its Season 35 cast, including Julia Stiles and Jenna Dewan](/news/entertainment/dwts-dancing-with-the-stars-season-35-cast-julia-stiles-jena-dewan-9.7330085)