Julia Stiles Really Cried on the ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ Set for This Reason
27 years after its release, behind-the-scenes revelations about the beloved 1999 teen classic 10 Things I Hate About You continue to surface — from Julia Stiles’ unscripted crying to the casting near-misses that could have changed everything.
Stiles revealed to Bustle in January 2025 that the poem scene — the emotional climax where Kat reads about Patrick and her voice cracks — took only two takes. She didn’t expect “to get choked up and cry” during the scene. It just happened.
“We were filming that scene at the end of the summer and the movie was going to be winding down, and it had been such a big experience for me,” Stiles said. “It was my first studio movie leading role. I loved that part so much. I loved the rest of the cast. And we’d had such a fun time and it was coming to an end, and it just … the emotion kind of got to me.”
The tears were real, but they created a problem. “We had to rerecord all of the audio in ADR because there was a creaking dolly,” Stiles said. “So I had to re-create the sound of me getting choked up months earlier.”
But Stiles almost wasn’t in the movie to begin with.
Casting Directors Had Other Actresses in Mind to Play Kat
Kate Hudson and Katie Holmes were both in the running. Casting director Marcia Ross recalled to The New York Times in 2019: “But Julia and Heath just had the best chemistry together. I loved Katie Holmes. She was about to get Dawson’s Creek, and we had to make a decision really fast. The other person I loved was Kate Hudson. But her mom didn’t like the script for her, so she passed.”
The Patrick Verona role had its own contenders. According to The Independent, Josh Hartnett and Ashton Kutcher were both considered.
Heath Ledger Really Sang on Those Bleachers
Ledger performed Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” himself during the bleacher serenade at Kat’s soccer practice. Choreographer Marguerite Pomerhn Derricks told Huffpost in March 2019: “The singing impressed me more than anything because, as a choreographer, I can always find a way to make actors look amazing. But singing? That’s something you can’t fake.”
The Film Featured a Very Risky Scene
The final shot of Letters to Cleo performing “I Want You to Want Me” on the roof of Padua High nearly didn’t happen. The studio pushed back hard over the cost of sending a helicopter up to film it.
Lead singer Kay Hanley told The New York Times in 2019: “We did two takes, and it was pretty much assumed that this shot wasn’t going to work, and Gil [the director] would never work in Hollywood again because he had just blown through half a million dollars doing this shot he was forbidden to do. And it ended up being a pretty iconic scene.”
Hanley described the setup: “We’re all arranged on top of this postage-stamp-sized roof with chicken wire the only thing protecting us from toppling to our deaths into the Puget Sound.” Director Gil Junger spent half a million dollars on a shot the studio forbade him from filming. It worked out.
Gabrielle Union’s Secret Age Gap
Gabrielle Union, who played Chastity, was far older than most of her castmates. “I was over 10 years older than my younger cast members, some of whom were still in high school,” Union told The New York Times. “So, it was kind of like, how close is this to my high school years? Do I look crazy playing a 15-year-old? Don’t mention Earth Wind & Fire or give away your age.”
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
