Ananda Lewis, the former MTV VJ who became a household name in the late ’90s and early 2000s, has died at 52.
Her sister, Lakshmi, announced her death in a Facebook post: “She’s free, and in His heavenly arms. Lord, rest her soul.”
Lewis revealed last year that her breast cancer had progressed to stage 4. In a video posted in October 2024, she said her condition had worsened, sharing the news candidly with followers who had followed her story since her initial diagnosis in 2020.
Born March 21, 1973, in Los Angeles, Lewis first drew national attention while still a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She appeared as the lead in the music video for Shai’s R&B hit “Baby, I’m Yours,” filmed on campus.
Her career began in earnest at BET’s Teen Summit, where in 1996 she interviewed then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. A year later, she joined MTV as a host of Total Request Live and Hot Zone, quickly becoming one of the most recognizable faces of the channel’s golden era.
In 1999, The New York Times dubbed her “the hip-hop generation’s reigning It Girl.”
Lewis left MTV in 2001 to launch The Ananda Lewis Show, a daytime talk show aimed at young women. It debuted on September 10, 2001. The timing, one day before the 9/11 attacks, proved disastrous. The show lasted only one season.
By 2004, she had moved to entertainment news, joining CBS’s The Insider, a spin-off of Entertainment Tonight.
In 2020, Lewis revealed she had been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She had avoided mammograms for years, citing concerns over radiation exposure. “I watched my mom get mammograms her whole life, and she died of breast cancer,” she said in an Instagram video. “So I made the mistake of not getting them.”
In a CNN roundtable discussion with Sara Sidner in 2024, Lewis reflected on her decision not to follow the full course of treatment doctors had advised. After her diagnosis, physicians recommended a double mastectomy. She refused.
“My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body,” she said during the segment. “I felt like my body is intelligent, I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made.”
“I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way. Looking back on that, I go, ‘You know what? Maybe I should have.’”
She added, “My quality of life was very important to me… I want to want to be here. So I had to do it a certain way, for me.”
Lewis pursued a mix of treatments: radiation, medication, changes in diet, better sleep. At times, she improved. But in 2023, she learned the cancer had spread.
“My lymph system really flared up,” she said. “It was the first time I ever had a conversation with death because I felt like, this is how it is.”
She is survived by her son, Langston, born in 2011. His father is Harry Smith, the brother of actor Will Smith.
