David Krumholtz is sharing why he missed the 10 Things I Hate About You reunion during Julia Stiles‘ tribute to Heath Ledger on Dancing With the Stars Tuesday night.
In a video posted on Instagram Wednesday, the actor explained that he’s currently in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York filming a movie.
“I could not be in L.A. for Dancing With the Stars last night. I would have loved loved loved to have been there,” he said. “Everyone looked so amazing. Julia’s tribute to my dear friend, who I miss every single day, was amazing and stunning, and I’m so proud of her.”
“I thought the cast looked amazing. They all look so young still,” Krumholtz added before taking off his hat to show his newly bald head. He quipped that “it would have been weird” to join his former co-stars in the ballroom after shaving “what’s left of my hair” because it would have become “internet fodder.”
“I didn’t want that, but that’s not why I wasn’t there. I would have dealt with it. Anyway, love them all, love you all,” he concluded.
During the latest DWTS episode, Stiles and her pro partner Ezra Sosa dedicated their dance to Ledger, who starred opposite Stiles in the beloved 1999 rom-com. He died in 2008 at the age of 28 from an accidental overdose.
The pair danced to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Frankie Valli, which was the song Ledger’s Patrick Verona serenaded Stiles’ Kat Stratford with during her soccer practice at the high school stadium. In the scene, he runs and dances across the stands as the marching band plays to try and win her over after Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan) pays him to take Kat out.
Following Stiles and Sosa’s emotional dance, which featured some of Ledger’s iconic moves, the poem her character reads in the film about Patrick starts playing in the ballroom. After the actress lays a flower on the ground in honor of Ledger, she is joined by her fellow 10 Things I Hate About You co-stars, including Keegan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Cameron James), Larisa Oleynik (Bianca Stratford), Gabrielle Union (Chastity) and Susan May Pratt (Mandella).
10 Things I Hate About You, directed by Gil Junger, follows teen Joey who wants to date Bianca, but she can’t date until her antisocial older sister, Kat, has a boyfriend, per her strict father’s rules. That’s when Joey pays a mysterious boy, Patrick, to ask Kat out. In the film, Krumholtz played Michael Eckman, a friend of new student Cameron who also has a crush on Bianca.