Ananda Lewis, former MTV VJ and talk show host, dead at 52

Ananda Lewis, a former MTV video jockey and talk show host, has passed away after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. She was 52.

Lewis’ sister, Lakshmi, announced the devastating news in a short Facebook post shared on Wednesday, June 11. “She’s free, and in His heavenly arms,” she wrote alongside a black-and-white photo of Lewis. “Lord, rest her soul.” Lewis’ passing this week comes nearly five years after she first revealed her Stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis in an Instagram post in October 2020.

“This is tough for me, but if just ONE woman decides to get her mammogram after watching this, what I’m going through will be worth it,” she wrote in the caption of the video while announcing that she was diagnosed two years earlier.

Lewis later opened up about her breast cancer diagnosis and how it progressed to Stage 4 during a CNN appearance in October 2024.

“My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body,” Lewis said, revealing she decided against undergoing a double mastectomy. “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. I wish I could go back,” she added. “It’s important for me to admit where I went wrong with this.”

The former video jockey and talk show host also said that “prevention is the real cure” in an issue of Essence published early this year and just months before her heartbreaking passin the network, including “Total Request Live” and “Hot Zone.”

But Lewis ultimately left MTV in 2001 to host her own daytime talk show, “The Ananda Lewis Show.” It premiered in September 2001 and lasted one season.

“I wanted a change,” she told Teen People at the time. “It was a matter of proving to myself that I can do [this].”

But Lewis also regretted rushing into her own talk show and admitted that it was “overkill.”

“I wish I had stopped the people that wanted me to do the show and said, ‘Not yet, it’s a little too early to do this.’ It was overkill for me,” she said after her show was canceled. “It wasn’t what I felt like I signed up for.”

Although Lewis took a brief break from television after “The Ananda Lewis Show,” she later returned as a correspondent for “The Insider,” a spin-off of “Entertainment Tonight,” from 2004 to 2005.

She also later appeared on the reality TV series “Celebrity Mole: Yucatán,” and hosted the A&E show “America’s Top Dog” and TLC’s “While You Were Out.”

In 2023, shortly after MTV News shut down, Lewis reflected on her time on the network. She said it was a “pillar of creative and diverse speech” and noted that MTV News “covered things no one else could.”

“A pillar of creative and diverse speech is crumbling,” Lewis told People at the time. “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.”

“Even though I was technically a VJ,” she added, “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.”

Lewis is survived by her son, Langston, whom she welcomed in 2011 with Will Smith’s younger brother, Harry Smith.

By Connor Surmonte