Twenty-seven years ago, a boy with a paint-splattered shirt climbed to the top of a set of bleachers, handed a marching band his sheet music, and sang Frankie Valli to the girl who hated him. It is still one of the most famous scenes in any romantic comedy ever made. This week, the girl from that scene danced to that exact song on live television, looked up at a photograph of the boy who is gone, and laid a rose down at its feet. Then something happened that nobody in the ballroom saw coming, and the internet has not stopped crying since.
Julia Stiles dedicated her Dancing With the Stars performance on Tuesday night to Heath Ledger, her co-star from 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You. By the time the final note played, the entire cast of the film was standing on the stage with her. If you grew up on this movie, this one is going to hurt in the best way.
The dance everyone is talking about
Tuesday, October 20 was Dedication Night on Dancing With the Stars, and it was the last dance of the evening. Julia Stiles and her professional partner Ezra Sosa performed a contemporary routine to Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” the very song Heath used to serenade Julia’s Kat in the film.
Nothing about the performance was accidental. Julia wore a blue dress that looked like a grown-up version of Kat’s outfit from the movie, and the choreography folded in nods to Ledger’s original bleachers routine. Before the dance, she told co-host Julianne Hough she had been reflecting on who she was at 17 and who she is now, and then she said something that clearly came straight from her chest.
“I remember that Heath just brought out the light in everybody,” she said. “He was the leader of the pack at the time. He made everybody else shine.”
“I really wish I could pick up the phone”
In her rehearsal package before the dance, Julia was already struggling to hold it together. “I learned a lot from Heath,” she said. “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.’”
She told People ahead of the show that the emotion had caught her completely off guard. “I’m actually surprised at how emotional it’s been,” she admitted. “I know from watching the show how emotional Dedication Night is. It’s always very personal stories. But I thought, ‘Oh, I’m distanced enough from it. The movie was so many years ago.’ But something about watching clips from that movie, seeing our pictures, hearing our voices is bringing up a lot.”
“I really feel how important it is to honor him,” she added. “He lives on because his performance in that film was so incredible.”
She and Ezra shared a joint statement on Instagram just before the show aired, saying they had poured so much love into the piece and hoped it would honor his memory “with the dignity, love, and respect it deserves.”
The ending that broke the internet
As the routine reached its final seconds, the music faded and an emotional voice message from Julia played over the ballroom. A photograph of her and Heath from the film appeared on the giant screen. She walked to the stairs, looked up at his face, and placed a single rose down in front of it.
Then the doors opened and out they walked: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, Andrew Keegan, and Susan May Pratt. The surviving core cast of 10 Things I Hate About You, together on one stage for the first time in decades, linking arms with Julia as the audience lost it. They looked toward Heath’s image, shared a long group hug, and for a moment the whole ballroom just stood there in silence.
It was the kind of television moment that used to be impossible to plan and is now nearly impossible to replicate. Julia and Ezra earned four nines from the judges, a 36 out of 40, but nobody was thinking about scores. On X, the reaction was immediate and unfiltered. “JULIA STILES DEDICATING HER DANCE TO HEATH LEDGER AND THE 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT U CAST IS THERE I’M STILL CRYING,” one viewer wrote. Another said, “When I say I literally cried, I MEAN IT. At the beautiful touchy poem and the whole cast gathered together to honour Heath Ledger. OH BEAUTIFUL.”
The song Heath chose himself
Here is a detail that makes the whole thing even more devastating: the song was Heath’s idea. The film’s co-screenwriter Karen McCullah revealed in a 2019 New York Times interview that “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was not even the first or second choice for the serenade scene. The team had “I Think I Love You” and “I Touch Myself” in mind. Heath decided neither was romantic enough, and he personally chose the Frankie Valli classic instead.
It turned out to be the best decision in the film. Twenty-seven years later, Julia chose the song right back for him. During the tribute, audio of Kat’s famous poem also played through the ballroom, the scene where she reads her words to Patrick and cries.
And yes, for the record, Julia and Heath never dated, no matter how real that chemistry looked. The on-set romance was actually between Julia and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Director Gil Junger revealed in 2021 that during the filming of the poem scene, the one where Kat cries reading her words aloud, Julia told him she was thinking of Joseph the whole time. But she always spoke about Heath with open admiration. In 2025 she told E! News that Heath, just 19 when they filmed, was “such a bright light” who walked into every room and lit it up.
Eighteen years without him
It has been 18 years since Heath Ledger died at 28 from an accidental overdose of prescription medication. He went on to win a posthumous Oscar for his unforgettable turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight, and his daughter Matilda, who was just two when he died, is now 20. The movie he made at 19, though, is the one that keeps finding new generations.
Not everyone loved it
No viral moment survives the internet without a backlash, and this one got its share. A vocal minority online accused Julia of exploiting Heath’s death to win votes on a reality competition, pointing out that most of the other contestants dedicated their dances to their mothers and family members. The criticism got loud enough that entertainment outlets picked it up.
Here is the thing, though. She told Variety she was crying in rehearsals, undone by old clips and the sound of his voice. You can fake a lot of things on television. Grief, at that level, is not one of them.
The five moments from the night that wrecked everyone
- The song choice. “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” was never just a song to this fandom. It was Heath’s song, chosen by Heath, and hearing it again felt like a door opening to 1999.
- The poem audio. Kat’s poem playing over the ballroom, the words she reads to Patrick in the film’s most emotional scene, was the moment the audience audibly broke.
- The rose. One red rose, placed on the stairs beneath his photograph. Simple, quiet, and somehow the heaviest thing on that stage all night.
- The cast walking out. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, Andrew Keegan, and Susan May Pratt appearing one by one. Twenty-seven years of nostalgia in about ten seconds.
- The group hug. All of them, arms around each other, looking up at Heath. The last thing the audience saw before the credits rolled.
Why this one hit different
Dancing With the Stars does emotional nights for a living, and most of them are forgotten by the next commercial break. This one landed because the movie it honored never really left. 10 Things I Hate About You is a generational touchstone, the rare teen comedy that aged into something closer to folklore, and its most beloved star died before he could see what it became.
Julia has been on a quiet redemption run this season, winning over skeptics week after week. But Dedication Night was not about proving anything. It was about a 17-year-old girl who grew up, looked back at the boy who made everybody shine, and gave him the goodbye the movie never got.
You can watch the full tribute performance below.
Sources: Just Jared, Hello Magazine, NME. Related on VIDX: more viral stories, DWTS benches Val Chmerkovskiy for a week, Richard Riehle dies at 78.
