Julia Stiles, ’10 Things I Hate About You’ Cast Honor Heath Ledger

By Daniel Okafor

Julia Stiles earned four nines on Dancing With the Stars for a contemporary tribute to Heath Ledger, who died in January 2008 at 28. She and Ezra Sosa danced to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” during Tuesday night’s Dedication Night episode.

The score was neat. The rehearsal was not. Stiles cried while practicing and became emotional in a video package shown before the performance. She told Sosa: “I learned a lot from Heath… It was so easy with him. I have so many great memories. I really wish I could pick up the phone, and be like, ‘Hey dude.’ ”

Stiles said her response to Ledger in the scene had been real. She also hoped to “recreate the musk for life he had” in that scene.

The phrase is unusual, but the intent is plain: the tribute required intimacy rather than impersonation. Her comments reveal the production’s central problem: preserving the film’s emotional charge without claiming the sole right to define a relationship, as Sosa later insisted.

What did the routine remember?

In the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You, Ledger played Patrick, who sang the Frankie Valli number “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to Stiles’s Kat Stratford from the bleachers while she was at soccer practice.

Sosa and Stiles built the routine around that exchange. It closed with a recording of Stiles reciting the poem she had read to Ledger in the movie. The poem, the song and the returning cast gave the number a clear and unusually direct dramatic arc from private memory to a collective public tribute.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, Andrew Keegan, Gabrielle Union and Susan May Pratt joined Stiles on the ballroom floor. Their entrance functioned like a curtain call, widening the two-person routine into a cast reunion.

How did the team approach such an emotional tribute?

Earlier in the week, Stiles told Variety:

“I know that Dedication Night is emotional, but I thought I was distanced from it enough. Like, oh, it was so many years ago. Something about seeing clips from that movie and images and hearing my voice and hearing his voice is bringing back so many memories. It’s a lot,”

She had started crying while practicing. She said: “One of the things that we really hope to do as performers is to make people feel something and have people care about the work that you do, and his memory lives on because it was such an incredible performance.”

Hours before the live show, Sosa shared a statement on Instagram. His words set out the production’s stated limits.

“I don’t think we’ve ever approached a performance with more care, sensitivity, and intention than this one. From the very beginning, it was incredibly important to both Julia and I that this tribute be created with the utmost respect, thoughtfulness, and close guidance from those who hold Heath and his memory closest,” he wrote.

“This isn’t about defining a relationship or telling a story that isn’t ours to tell. It’s about honoring a beautiful moment in time, a film that changed so many lives, and someone whose impact continues to be felt by generations.”

“We’ve poured so much love into this piece, and we’re incredibly grateful for the trust placed in us to bring it to life.”

“Our only hope is that it honors his memory with the dignity, love, and respect it deserves.”

Sosa’s statement made the boundary explicit. The tribute could preserve a scene and invite members of the film’s cast back onto the floor, but it could not settle what that relationship meant. That restraint gave the routine its purpose without pretending to own the past.

Four nines settled the score. The longer assignment remains the one Stiles described: making people feel something and care about Ledger’s work, so his memory lives on through performance.