Julia Stiles‘ recital of that emotional poem in 10 Things I Hate About You may have cued the waterworks, but she admits it was never supposed to be that emotional in the first place.
In an interview with Bustle released Wednesday, the actress and director of Wish You Were Here reflected on her breakout role as Kat Stratford in the teen romcom in which she and Heath Ledger‘s Patrick Verona fall in love. In one scene in particular, Stiles’ Kat recites an emotional poem to Ledger’s Patrick in which she expresses her heartbreak and feelings for him as she offers 10 things she “hates” about him.
“In the table read with the whole cast, I kind of just read it without any emotion and I do remember the director saying, ‘She’ll be more emotional next time,’ so maybe that sunk in,” Stiles recalled of the poem scene.
Despite tears not being scripted, the actress admitted that she grew emotional during the scene given filming was coming to an end.
“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,” she 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.”
Despite being a memorable scene, Stiles admitted that the two takes didn’t fare given she actually had to redo the poem reading and recreate her emotion in post-production due to a technical glitch.
“We had to rerecord all of the audio in ADR because there was a creaking dolly,” she said. “So I had to recreate the sound of me getting choked up months earlier.”
In addition to Stiles and Ledger, who passed away in 2008, the 1999 film also starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, David Krumholtz, Andrew Keegan, Larry Miller and Allison Janney.
Stiles has described Ledger as being “such a bright light” while filming. “He just walked into the room and lit it up,” she told E! News in a separate interview. “He was very kind and generous to me which you know, when you’re an actress in your first leading role in a big studio movie, you need to feel comfortable with the other person. And he was very generous that way.”
Now being 26 years since the film’s release, Stiles has some thoughts on what Kat would be doing today.
“I think Kat would be living in the Berkshires in a cabin with no screens and no social media. Baking her own sourdough bread,” she said. “I think she would rebel against [being online]. Maybe she does poetry reads at the local coffee shop. She’s probably a lot happier out of high school.”
As for Kat and Ledger’s Patrick, Stiles remained mum on whether she thought the two would still be together.
English (US) ·