Julia Stiles Exits 'Dancing With the Stars' Despite Outscoring Maura Higgins

Harry Shum Jr. took immunity by one point, 236 to 235, after he and Jenna Dewan both scored perfect 40s.

Julia Stiles danced a paso doble to “Satisfied” from Hamilton on ribs that had been hurting for weeks. She scored a 33 and went home. Deadline reported that Stiles and her pro partner, Ezra Sosa, were eliminated on Monday’s Disney Night episode of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, the eighth week of Season 35.

The surprise is where she sat on the scoreboard. With solo and team dances combined, The Hollywood Reporter’s leaderboard had Stiles and Sosa at 69 out of 80. That tied them with Tatyana Ali and Jan Ravnik and put them a point ahead of Maura Higgins and Mark Ballas. The couple that goes home is the one with the lowest total once judges’ scores and viewer votes are combined, THR noted, so the judges’ scores alone wouldn’t have sent Stiles home.

Her night had its fans. Deadline reported that Lin-Manuel Miranda was rooting for her, and that the routine broke a streak of dances honoring Stiles’ own projects. Judge Carrie Ann Inaba told her, “I loved it. I thought it was great.” TVLine’s recap was cooler, judging the paso a big step up from Stiles’ previous outing that still didn’t show enough command of technique to carry her to the trophy.

At the top of the board, three routines earned perfect scores. The Hollywood Reporter’s scorecard gave Harry Shum Jr. and his pro, Jenna Johnson, a 40 for a jazz number to “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” their second perfect score in a row, a week after they landed the season’s first one. Jenna Dewan and her pro, Val Chmerkovskiy, matched them with a quickstep to “Be Our Guest,” the first perfect score of their season, Deadline noted. The third went to Team Wildcats, the group dance featuring Shum, Dewan, Connor Wood and Ezra Frech, which beat Team Slaytopia’s 36.

Two perfect solo scores made the tie matter. Co-host Julianne Hough announced that the couple leading after the solo dances would be safe from next week’s dance-off. With Shum and Dewan level, the show broke the tie on each couple’s total for the whole season, and The Hollywood Reporter put those totals at 236 to 235, in Shum’s favor.

This year’s theme drew on Broadway versions of Disney stories, and so did the guests. Cynthia Erivo sat in as guest judge and said Shum’s routine left her “flabbergasted,” Deadline reported. TVLine reported that Heather Headley, the original Aida on Broadway, sang “Easy as Life” live while Ali danced a contemporary routine to it. Ali scored a 33, the same score Stiles got, and she’s still in.

Frech, the Paralympic gold medalist, sits third. His partner, Daniella Karagach, said they had once figured the samba was off limits because of his prosthetic, according to Deadline. Their samba to “Under the Sea” scored 37, including a 10 from Derek Hough.

The show moved to Monday to stay out of the way of Election Day coverage. It returns to Tuesdays next week for Grammy Night, with seven couples left and, by TVLine’s count, three weeks to go. Shum walks in safe from the dance-off. Dewan matched him perfect score for perfect score on Monday and is one point short of the same deal.

Source: Deadline, retrieved November 3, 2026. Other sources: The Hollywood Reporter, tvline.com.