Ananda Lewis, Former MTV VJ and Talk Show Host, Dies at 52

Ananda Lewis has died at the age of 52.

The former MTV VJ’s sister Lakshmi announced news of her death in a Facebook post shared on Wednesday, June 11.

“She’s free, and in His heavenly arms,” she wrote, alongside a series of broken heart emojis and a black and white portrait of Lewis. “Lord, rest her soul 🙏🏽”

Lewis became well known in 1997 when she was hired to be one of MTV’s VJs, hosting shows like Total Request Live and Hot Zone. In 1999, The New York Times dubbed her “the hip-hop generation’s reigning It Girl.” She left MTV in 2001 to host her own talk show, The Ananda Lewis Show.

Lewis revealed in a 2020 Instagram post that she had been diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. She said that she had not been getting regular mammograms because of her fear of radiation. In October 2024, Lewis took part in a roundtable discussion with CNN’s Stephanie Elam (her friend from college) and CNN anchor Sara Sidner in which she revealed that she went against medical advice and did not have a double mastectomy after she was diagnosed. Her tumor had metastasized, and her cancer had progressed to stage IV, she shared.

“My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body. I felt like my body is intelligent, I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made,” Lewis said. “I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way. . . . I wish I could go back. It’s important for me to admit where I went wrong with this.”

In an essay she published in Essence in January, Lewis emphasized that “prevention is the real cure” for cancer, and urged women to pay attention to their bodies.

“We’re not meant to stay here forever. We come to this life, have experiences — and then we go,” she wrote. “Being real about that with yourself changes how you choose to live. I don’t want to spend one more minute than I have to suffering unnecessarily. That, for me, is not the quality of life I’m interested in. When it’s time for me to go, I want to be able to look back on my life and say, ‘I did that exactly how I wanted to.'”

Lewis was born in Los Angeles in 1973. Her parents divorced when she was 2, and she and her sister, Lakshmi, moved with her mother to live with their grandmother in San Diego. In 1999, Lewis opened up to Teen People about her difficult relationship with her mother as a child and teenager.

“Mom was overwhelmed from the get-go, devastated by the divorce and working hard to support two kids,” she said. But Lewis felt neglected and “built up a lot of resentment toward her.”

“By the time I was 10, I’d become a belligerent, rebellious kid, and my mother and I were fighting about everything,” she explained.

She attended an arts high school and spent her time in school plays and volunteering. After graduating from Howard University in 1995, she landed a job as the host of BET’s Teen Summit, which filmed in D.C. In one episode, she interviewed then First Lady Hillary Clinton.

“That experience got me noticed at MTV and in August of 1997, I moved to New York and started working there,” she told Teen People. Months earlier, in December 1996, she had reconciled with her mother after a period of estrangement. “I decided to close the chapter on being hateful and resentful toward my mom and open a new one that focused on love, forgiveness and appreciation for her,” she explained.

Lewis became one of MTV’s most popular hosts. ”In the past, our talent was sometimes just pretty people who could read cue cards,” Bob Kusbit, then MTV’s senior vice president for production told The New York Times in 1999 about her talents. ”But when we brought Ananda to MTV, we decided we were going to do a lot more live television, and I was first and foremost interested in her ability to do live TV.”

Lewis interviewed celebrities including Destiny’s Child, Brandy, NSYNC, Britney Spears and many more. She also ended up covering heavier topics for the network, including violence in schools and the 2001 death of Aaliyah, who was her close friend.

In 2000, PEOPLE named Lewis one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. She also made frequent appearances at celebrity events. Even Prince was a vocal fan; he told The New York Times, “Ananda is Cleopatra. You know she’s a queen.”

Lewis left her MTV role in 2001 and began hosting her eponymous talk show. “I wanted a change,” she told Teen People at the time. “It was a matter of proving to myself that I can do [this].” The series — which premiered Sept. 10, 2001 — lasted one season.

Reflecting on the series to Shondaland, Lewis said, “I wish I had stopped the people that wanted me to do the [talk] show and said, ‘Not yet, it’s a little too early to do this.’ It was overkill for me.” She said she wasn’t happy with the show, explaining, “It wasn’t what I felt like I signed up for.”

Lewis took a break from television and later appeared as a host on The Insider, a spin-off of Entertainment Tonight. She also appeared on the reality series Celebrity Mole: Yucatán and hosted A&E’s America’s Top Dog and TLC’s While You Were Out. Lewis also became a contractor and carpenter.

MTV News shut down in 2023. Lewis reflected in a statement to PEOPLE at the time, “A pillar of creative and diverse speech is crumbling. MTV News covered things no one else could. We could get inside the trailer with DMX and Korn as they were taking historic concert stages. Artists trusted MTV News to tell their stories.”

She added: “Even though I was technically a VJ, I did many specials with MTV News and know firsthand what a huge loss this is for the culture of music and all who love it.”

In 2011, Lewis welcomed son Langston with Harry Smith, brother of Will Smith