Ananda Lewis, Celebrate MTV VJ, Dead at 52

Ananda Lewis, a former MTV veejay during the late Nineties and who shared her breast cancer journey with fans, has died at the age of 52.

Lewis’ death was confirmed on Wednesday in a Facebook post by her sister, Lakshmi Emory. Lewis revealed in 2020 that she had been diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. In her video announcement at the time, she urged women to practice early detection and to get mammograms.

“I need you to share this with the women in your life who may be as stubborn as I was about mammograms and I need you to tell them that they have to do it,” Lewis said in her 2020 Instagram post. “Early detection, especially for breast cancer, changes your outcome. It can save their life.”

Lewis was hired by MTV in 1997 as one of their first video jockeys, and would go on to host shows like Total Request Live and Hot Zone. In 2001 she started her own talk show, The Ananda Lewis Show, which ran from 2001 to 2002. Lewis would later join The Insider, an Entertainment Tonight spinoff as a correspondent from 2004 to 2005. During the revival of TLC’s While You Were Out in 2019, Lewis returned as the show’s host.

Last October, Lewis said that her cancer had progressed to stage IV. During a discussion with CNN’s correspondents Stephanie Elam and Sarah Sidner, who was also diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024, Lewis opened up about her treatment path. “This journey is very personal and you have to do what works for you and only you,” she said.

Her fellow former MTV VJ Dave Holmes remembered Lewis on social media following news of her death. “She was the best: friendly funny kind clever cool committed passionate patient stylish and smart. If you were working with her, you knew you’d be having fun, and you’d want to step your game up to match her effortless charisma,” he wrote in an Instagram post alongside a photo of Lewis and the song “Someday We’ll Know” by the New Radicals. “You couldn’t, but the trying made you better. We bonded over our shared love of this song, it has reminded me of her ever since, and now it always will.”