Former MTV VJ Ananda Lewis dies after battle with breast cancer

Ananda Lewis, erstwhile MTV video jockey and tv amusement host, has died astatine 52 aft a years-long conflict with bosom cancer.

Lewis roseate to fame connected BET’s “Teen Summit” and hosted “The Ananda Lewis Show” successful the aboriginal aughts, earlier being diagnosed with bosom crab successful 2019.

Her sister, Lakshmi Emory, broke the quality of Lewis’ decease successful a Facebook post, writing, “[S]he’s escaped and successful His heavenly arms. Lord remainder her soul.” Emory told TMZ that Lewis died Wednesday greeting from Stage 4 bosom crab portion successful hospice attraction astatine her Los Angeles home.

Lewis grew up successful San Diego and graduated from Howard University successful 1995. She began her amusement vocation arsenic the big of “Teen Summit,” wherever she discussed issues affecting teenagers and interviewed then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

MTV past hired her to beryllium a VJ successful 1997 and she rapidly gained popularity hosting shows specified arsenic “Total Request Live” and “Hot Zone.” In 1999, the New York Times called her “the hip-hop generation’s reigning It Girl.” She near the web successful 2001 to big her ain speech amusement and aboriginal worked arsenic a analogous for amusement quality amusement “The Insider.”

She revealed her crab diagnosis successful a 2020 Instagram post, saying that she had not been getting mammograms owed to her fears astir radiation and urging her follows to marque definite they are staying connected apical of their bosom exams.

“This is pugnacious for me, but if conscionable ONE pistillate decides to get her mammogram aft watching this, what I’m going done volition beryllium worthy it,” she said.

She spoke astatine magnitude astir her conflict with the illness successful a 2024 roundtable treatment with CNN correspondents Stephanie Elam, who was 1 of her adjacent friends, and Sara Sidner, a bosom crab survivor.

Lewis described archetypal discovering a lump successful her bosom successful 2019 and said that, though doctors recommended a treble mastectomy astatine the time, she opted to prosecute alternate therapies and absorption connected cleansing her assemblage of toxins and affectional stress.

She aboriginal relocated to Arizona, wherever she combined holistic and accepted treatments done approaches specified arsenic insulin-potentiation chemotherapy — wherever patients instrumentality little chemotherapy doses due to the fact that of a mentation that insulin lets much of the cause participate cells. She said she encountered fiscal difficulties that made it challenging to support up with her holistic regimen of treatment.

By October 2023, her scans showed that the crab had metastasized successful her spine, done her hips and into her lymph nodes.

During the roundtable, Lewis highlighted the information that Black women are astatine a disproportionately precocious hazard of dying from bosom cancer, attributing that, successful part, to a mistrust of the aesculapian system.

“Our inability to beryllium comfy with doctors goes mode back,” she said. “We person a rightful distrust of the aesculapian manufacture that we request to get over, but we are not going to negate that it came from determination and that it’s real.”

Although Black women and achromatic women are affected by bosom crab astatine akin rates, Black women are astir 40% much apt to dice from the disease, according to information compiled by the American Cancer Society.

Times unit writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report