Julia Stiles Finally Got Her Save The Last Dance Do-Over On DWTS

Julia Stiles had the perfect hype man on Tuesday’s Dancing With the Stars. The show’s audience is dependably full of friends, family, and celebrity pals cheering on their loved ones, but the Oct. 13 episode, Super Bowl Night, brought a particularly nostalgic visitor for Stiles, whose routine paid tribute to her 2001 film Save the Last Dance.

For the themed night, the celebrity contestants and their pro partners each performed to songs from past Super Bowl halftime shows. Stiles and Ezra Sosa opted for a jazz routine set to Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny From the Block,” and Sosa’s choreography drew directly from the Juilliard audition scene in Save the Last Dance, right down to the prop chair. “I feel like there are rules that we’re gonna be breaking, but I really trust his artistry,” Stiles said of revisiting her much-memed routine. “This is my chance for the do-over that I’ve always wanted. So, I have to just go out there and own it. I have no other choice.”

She crushed it. Stiles and Sosa earned a combined 33 out of 40, good for fourth place on the night, and Stiles had an especially enthusiastic cheerleader in the crowd: her Save the Last Dance co-star, Sean Patrick Thomas, who could be seen smiling and grooving along.

“I am just over the moon to be here to watch Julia do her thing tonight on Dancing with the Stars,” Thomas said in a video posted by the show. “We had a great time doing Save the Last Dance back in the day, and she brought it all the way back here tonight.”

The show of support echoes the movie itself. In Save the Last Dance, Stiles plays Sara, a ballet dancer who quits after her mother dies in a car accident on the way to her first Juilliard audition. Thomas’ Derek, a classmate who becomes her love interest, helps her blend hip-hop into her ballet and pushes her to try again. When she does, he shows up partway through the audition to cheer her on. The scene ends with Derek telling the judges, “All due respect, if you don’t let this girl in, you’re crazy.”

Thomas grooving along in the DWTS audience is about as close to a Sara-and-Derek sequel as fans have gotten so far, though both actors have weighed in on the possibility of a real one. “I can never think of something that sounds plausible. Unless they ended up getting married somehow. But that seems too easy,” Thomas told E! News in 2021, adding that he’d take a look if someone had a good idea. Stiles, for her part, pitched a reunion that opens with Sara and Derek running into each other at the grocery store, adult lives in tow.

Meanwhile, Thomas’ surprise cameo serves as a 25-year reunion in its own adorable way.