Ananda Lewis went on to become one of MTV's most popular hosts, helming 'Total Request Live' and 'Hot Zone' before leaving the network in 2001 to host her eponymous talk show. Photo: Ananda Lewis/Instagram
Ananda Lewis, the former MTV VJ known in the late 1990s as the “It Girl” for the hip-hop generation, has died after a years-long battle with breast cancer.
The TV host, former model and social activist was 52.
“She’s free, and in His heavenly arms,” her sister Lakkshmi Emory announced on Facebook Wednesday, punctuated with a long string of broken-heart emojis. “Lord, rest her soul.”
Born on March 21, 1973 in San Diego, Lewis first got noticed at MTV when she interviewed then First Lady Hillary Clinton for BET’s Teen Summit, according to People.
She went on to become one of the pioneering music-video network’s most popular hosts, helming Total Request Live and Hot Zone before leaving MTV in 2001 to host her eponymous talk show.
Though The Ananda Lewis Show eventually grew to 1.35 million viewers, the series premiered the day before the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, which delayed the run by about three weeks. The show eventually lasted two seasons.
Lewis went on to become an actress and producer, working on such movies as On the Line, Nora’s Hair Salon II and Method & Red.
Lewis announced last October that the stage 3 breast cancer she had revealed in 2020 had metastasised and returned as stage 4. She had opted to forego a double mastectomy during her initial treatment.
She first let the world know in October 2020, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, that she’d been battling the disease privately for two years. She urged women to get routine mammograms, something she had opted out of for fear of radiation.
“For a really long time, I have refused mammograms, and that was a mistake,” she said in a video at the time. “I watched my mum get mammograms for almost 30 years almost, and at the end of that, she had breast cancer, and I said, ‘Huh. Radiation exposure for years equals breast cancer. Yeah, I’m going to pass. Thanks anyway.’ ”
She said she began treatment that shrank some of the tumours, but it didn’t stop the onslaught.
“I wish I could go back,” she said in one update. “It’s important for me to admit where I went wrong with this.” – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
