‘Save the Last Dance’ costars said film handled its interracial relationship with ‘nuance’ and authenticity

• “Save the Last Dance” costars Sean Patrick Thomas and Julia Stiles spoke with Insider about the movie’s handling of Black characters and storylines.
• “In 2021, I still don’t think we see enough Black men on screen as leading men, as love interests,” Thomas said.
• “To have been able to do that 20 years ago and to have people still love it … is something that I will forever be proud of,” he added.
• Stiles said her “white privilege” was the reason she went into the movie still ignorant of how racist people could be 20 years ago, seeing an interracial relationship onscreen. 
• Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Twenty years ago, “Save the Last Dance” joined the legacy of dance-drama movies, with costars Sean Patrick Thomas and Julia Stiles playing Derek and Sara, two high-school seniors who fall in love, trading their interests in hip-hop and ballet. 

“Save the Last Dance” didn’t just focus on dance battles and a sweet romance though. The movie, written by Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards, also tackled prejudice, white privilege, and the systemic racism experienced by Black teenagers in Chicago.

Tension is built throughout the movie as Sara, a naive suburban white girl, experiences culture shock after she transfers to a majority Black high school.

“This was a major studio film with a studio budget and all that, and at the time it was extremely rare for there to be a Black man as a co-lead in a romantic movie with a white girl, or with any girl, period,” Thomas told Insider during a recent conversation.

“In 2021, I still don’t think we see enough Black men on screen as leading men – as love interests. It’s still too rare in my opinion,” he continued. “To have been able to do that 20 years ago and to have people still love it and know it has impact and staying power, that’s something that I will forever be proud of, just as a Black man.”

Insider spoke with Thomas, as well as his costar Julia Stiles, about how the movie tackled race and racism through two teens falling in love.

Thomas felt the movie handled its Black characters and storylines 'with nuance'

"Save the Last Dance" opens with Sara (Julia Stiles) failing to secure a spot at the prestigious dance school Juilliard after she falls during her audition at the very moment her mom gets into a deadly car accident.

Sara is then sent off to live with her dad in Chicago. It's here, in her new majority-Black high school, that Sara meets Derek (Sean Patrick Thomas), a fellow senior who wants to go to med-school to become a pediatrician.

Sara's ballet training does her no favors at the local dance club Stepps, and she strikes up a friendship with Derek, who starts teaching her hip-hop and eventually encourages her to reapply to Julliard.

Read more: 'Save the Last Dance' costars Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas break down the movie's iconic dance scene 20 years later

As Sara and Derek fall in love, Derek's friends and sister Chenille (Kerry Washington) confront him over his changing priorities and Sara's lack of understanding when it comes to the systemic racism felt by Black students in her new school. 

Thomas said he felt "Save the Last Dance" handled the intricacies of an interracial relationship very thoughtfully.

"I feel like it was handled fairly adeptly and with nuance, in the sense that there were lot of places in the script, and as we were shooting it, where things could have slid into stereotypes," Thomas said, reflecting on how the movie handled its Black characters.

"The romance could have been more about, 'Wow, he's Black and that's different,' or 'She's white and that's different,' and it wasn't about that. It was about these two people who connected on a human level," he added.

"To that extent, race was almost a side issue," Thomas continued. "But at the same time, we didn't shy away from it either, obviously. [At one point in] their relationship where Derek felt like they were getting closer and she kinda backs away and freaks out, race is a part of why she does that."

"And that's real," he continued. "And [in the movie] it happens in a way where it doesn't demonize her, you know? And I think that's something that people respond to - the authenticity in that and how that can really happen and that can really be overcome."

One of the stand-out scenes in the movie happens when Chenille confronts Sara 

Stiles, who was 19 while filming the movie, said she learned a lot about race after the film premiered on January 12, 2001.

"Making the movie opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wasn't aware of," she told Insider. "It's my white privilege that allowed me to go into making that movie thinking, 'Are people still racist? Or do people disapprove of a Black guy and a white girls getting together? That seems crazy to me.'"

"But obviously I was ignorant in many ways because now more than ever we see that those biases and prejudices certainly still exist," she continued. "I credit the movie that it opened my eyes to the perspective of some of the supporting characters, like Kerry Washington's character Chenille."

Read more: The 'Save the Last Dance' costars had a 'shared mission' to pull off 'the movie because they knew people were doubting them'

Towards the end of "Save the Last Dance," Sara is confronted by Chenille when she fails to take responsibility for getting into a fight with one of Derek's ex-girlfriends, Nikki. 

"Here you come, white, so you gotta be right, and you take one of the few decent men we have left after jail, drugs, and drive-bys," Chenille tells Sara in the film. "That is what Nikki meant about you up in our world."

"There's only one world, Chenille," Sara replies.

"That is what they teach you," Chenille says. "We know different."

On the 20th anniversary of "Save the Last Dance," Washington retweeted a video of the scene, adding "we been telling y'all for a loooooooong time. [Two] different worlds."

"One thing that I think is really cool about the movie is that it sneaks in those more serious issues underneath this entertaining teen dance movie," Stiles said while reflecting on that moment in the movie.

—kerry washington (@kerrywashington) January 12, 2021

Despite studio executives doubting that Thomas and Stiles could pull off the movie, "Save the Last Dance" surpassed expectations, knocking the Tom Hanks-led "Cast Away" off the top-spot in the box office in 2001, and earning just over $27 million in its first weekend.

Now it remains one of the most memorable dance-dramas ever made to this day. 

For more on the film's legacy and what its costars remember most from filming, read Insider's other "Save the Last Dance" features here.