Julia Stiles Felt Slimy for Dance Scene in Freddie Prinze Jr. Rom-Com

Julia Stiles revealed she felt “slimy” about one memorable scene in her and Freddie Prinze Jr‘s romantic-comedy Down to You.

“Harvey Weinstein got his hands on [the movie] and decided to capitalize on [a] trend and it just became dumb,” Stiles, 43, revealed during the Tuesday, March 11, episode of the “Films To Be Buried With” podcast.

Stiles and Prinze, 49, starred in the 2000 blockbuster as a young couple falling in love while attending college in New York City. Down to You‘s production was notoriously contentious as now-disgraced producer Weinstein took control away from writer-director Kris Isacsson during post-production.

Weinstein allegedly ordered significant reshoots to make Down to You more like Prinze’s 1999 hit comedy She’s All That, including inserting a scene where Stiles’ character, Imogen, dances on a pool table to Al Green‘s “Let’s Stay Together” to woo Prinze’s uptight wallflower, Al.

In her podcast interview, Stiles told host Brett Goldstein that Weinstein started “pouring money” into the post-production of Down to You in “stupid ways.”

“We went and did reshoots, and I’m told that he decided that because of … the success of 10 Things I Hate About You with me dancing on the pool table, [so] he, like, needed to have me dancing in [Down to You],” she remembered. “I would make a whole movie dancing. I love to dance, but it was dumb. It was like, ‘OK, let’s get her on a pool table’ … It wasn’t even imaginative and I felt so slimy doing it the whole time.”

Stiles felt that the gratuitous dance sequence was “so cheap” especially because it wasn’t “adding to the story” in any meaningful way.

“It’s not a creative [decision], it’s not a creative reason. There’s no creativity behind it,” she complained.

Weinstein’s meddling didn’t end up helping Down to You as the film was widely panned by critics and underperformed at the box office at a time when Stiles and Prinze were both reliable money-makers for Hollywood.

Podcaster Chris O’Falt, who worked on Down to You, wrote in a 2017 IndieWire feature that the film’s original script was an “an edgy, unorthodox look at a group of friends struggling with post-college life” before Weinstein gutted the plot.

“[There were] a series of test screenings, re-edits, and expensive last minute reshoots, to say nothing of [Weinstein’s] demeaning verbal assaults on a promising young filmmaker,” O’Falt recalled. “Heaven and earth were moved, and souls were crushed, because Weinstein knew how to react, not steer. As the film’s financier, it was Weinstein’s prerogative to Frankenstein Down to You as he saw fit. However, the result was a slightly-schizophrenic, over-budget film.”

Down to You did provide an early platform for several young stars, including Selma Blair playing a college dropout-turned-amateur porn star, Ashton Kutcher as a wannabe psychedelic rocker and Rosario Dawson as Stiles’ on-screen best friend.

Stiles has spoken often about the perils of achieving fame at such a young age. In December 2024, the Save the Last Dance actress exclusively told Us Weekly about how she navigates her celebrity status these days.

“[Fame] can be a little scary, don’t get me wrong, but I try to focus on the positive aspects of it,” she acknowledged.

Stiles made her feature directorial debut earlier this year with Wish You Were Here, which was adapted from author Renée Carlino‘s 2017 bestselling novel of the same name. The romantic drama is a love story between a terminally ill man (Mena Massoud) and a young woman (Isabelle Fuhrman) he meets on a whim.