Julia Stiles asked Michelle Williams before her Heath Ledger tribute on Dancing With the Stars

On Dedication Night, October 20, Julia Stiles and pro partner Ezra Sosa danced a contemporary routine to Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" — the song Heath Ledger sang to her character on the bleachers in 10 Things I Hate About You. Her monologue from the film played as she stood alone, a still of her and Ledger filled the back screen, and she placed a rose on the floor in his memory. The judges gave it 36 out of 40.

But the detail that elevates the whole thing happened weeks before air. Stiles told Extra that her first call was to Michelle Williams — Ledger's former partner and the mother of his daughter Matilda — to ask "if this was okay." Williams' answer was yes, and of Ledger's family in Australia, Stiles added: "I don't really want to speak for them."

Why that call changes the reading

Let's be honest about the setup: a tribute to a beloved actor who died in 2008, performed on a voting competition show, could very easily read as spending someone's memory for points. That's the version of this number that doesn't ask anyone first and dances it solo.

Stiles built the opposite. The blessing came from the person with the most right to object, and the dance was framed as something bigger than her own nostalgia — she told Entertainment Weekly the producers' reunion idea only worked on one condition:

"It has to be the whole cast, can't just be one person, 'cause we were a pack."

— Julia Stiles, to Entertainment Weekly

And the pack came. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, Susan May Pratt and Andrew Keegan all walked out to join her at the end of the routine, 27 years after the film.

The audience got the message

The clip passed 723,000 views on YouTube within a day, and the top comments show the tribute landed exactly as built:

"Crying the entire dance, lost it with the rose and the cast coming out. The loss of Heath hit so hard and this just brought back all the feels 😢"

— a YouTube comment under the DWTS clip, 1.5K upvotes

The second-most-upvoted comment (1.1K) caught the craft underneath: "They even incorporated Heath Ledger's moves into the dance." Stiles herself didn't pretend the process was easy, saying she bawled through the first day of rehearsals from the nostalgia, and Carrie Ann Inaba's judging note — "contemporary is about expression of the soul and opening up the heart" — read like a description of the assignment rather than the technique.

The one empty spot

One cast member was missing, and Stiles headed off the speculation herself: "For the record, very important PSA: David Krumholtz. We wanted him here. He wanted to be here." Krumholtz is shooting an HBO series in New York, which made the Los Angeles taping impossible.

Krumholtz filed his own explanation by Instagram video, from a parking lot in the Catskills:

"I could not be in L.A. for 'Dancing with the Stars' last night. I would have loved, loved, loved to have been there."

— David Krumholtz, on Instagram

He also joked that he'd shaved what was left of his hair for the role and would have looked out of place next to castmates who "all look so young still" — before clarifying, for the record, that this was not the reason.

Five of the main cast flew in for one dance. The sixth sent his apology from a parking lot in the Catskills.

Can nostalgia carry her to the finale?

Now the competition math. Stiles' 36 was strong but not the night's peak — Amber Glenn scored a season-best 38, with Ezra Frech and Jenna Dewan at 37 — and Dedication Night's no-elimination twist means the bill comes due on October 27, when Horror Movie Night brings a double elimination.

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What Stiles has that the leaderboard doesn't measure is the most-discussed performance of the season so far, on a show decided by viewer votes. Whether a 723K-views wave of goodwill converts into ballots with two couples going home next week — that's the real test of what this tribute bought her.

Previously we wrote: CBS called Melissa McCarthy, Jon Cryer and Christine Baranski 'the death of comedy.' Nobody ever apologized