Julia Stiles has accidentally arrived on Dancing With the Stars with perhaps the funniest fake résumé in the competition: fans keep joking that she is a Juilliard-trained dancer. The 45-year-old 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance star was announced as Ezra Sosa's Season 35 partner on 2 September, immediately reviving jokes that her fictional dance credentials give her an unfair advantage.
The problem is that Stiles never attended Juilliard. Her character, Sara Johnson, did in 2001's Save the Last Dance, and the distinction has become blurred enough online that some viewers appear unsure where the joke ends. Under Sosa's first TikTok introducing his partner, comments included, 'That's cheating. She went to Juilliard,' and 'No one else has a chance now,' while another jokingly declared Stiles a 'classically trained dancer'.
Save the Last Dance Gave Stiles Her Fake Juilliard Credentials
The joke requires a trip back 25 years. In Save the Last Dance, Stiles plays Sara, an aspiring ballerina who moves to Chicago following her mother's death, falls for Derek, played by Sean Patrick Thomas, and eventually auditions for Juilliard. The climactic audition combines ballet and hip-hop, and Sara ultimately gets into the prestigious performing arts school, creating an apparently indestructible piece of fictional Julia Stiles lore.
The film has remained so closely associated with Stiles that its choreography continues resurfacing online, including renewed attention after her DWTS casting. One Reddit discussion about whether Stiles genuinely has an unfair advantage drew a commenter who admitted, 'At this point I also can't tell if people are joking or not,' while another thread included a user claiming they had seen people apparently mistake Sara's Juilliard audition for the real thing. Stiles' actual university history is considerably less dance-heavy: she graduated from Columbia University.
Juilliard's Attempt To Capitalise on the Joke Fumbles the Moment
Juilliard itself entered the bit on 3 September, posting, 'Checks registrar. No, Julia Stiles did not, in fact, attend Juilliard.' The school added that it loved her anyway, wished her luck on DWTS and used the viral moment to promote the opening night of its Fall Festival on 16 September, inviting followers to see its 'actual' dancers, musicians and actors.
Many commenters said Juilliard had fumbled an easy pop-culture win. One of the top replies joked, 'The name would be under Sara Johnson,' referring to Stiles' Save the Last Dance character, while another sighed, 'You were handed a fun opportunity.' A third was even more direct: 'What sweet summer child is running this account and doesn't know about Sara Johnson aka Julia Stiles. You had the chance to do the funniest thing.' The reaction was less about correcting the record and more about fans thinking the school had missed the obvious chance to play along with a joke already built around its own name.
Julia Stiles' Latest Video Finally Addresses the Meme
Stiles has since taken the debunking into her own hands. In a TikTok with Sosa posted ahead of the Season 35 premiere, the actress joined a trend to clarify that she is not Juilliard-trained, is not secretly a professional dancer and had a body double for more difficult portions of Save the Last Dance. While Stiles did learn ballet, modern dance, jazz and tap classes as a teenager, her serious dance experience largely belonged to the preparation she did for the film.
That makes the supposed DWTS advantage considerably less straightforward than the meme suggests. Stiles has said she stopped taking dance classes after Save the Last Dance because expectations surrounding her abilities left her self-conscious, describing herself now as a 'home dancer'. Longtime judge Carrie Ann Inaba has also said experience in other dance styles does not automatically translate to ballroom technique, meaning Stiles will still have to prove what she can actually do when Dancing With the Stars Season 35 premieres on 15 to 16 September on ABC and Disney+.
