Ananda Lewis | |
|---|---|
 Lewis in 2007 | |
| Born | Sarasvati Ananda Lewis (1973-03-21)March 21, 1973 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | June 11, 2025(2025-06-11) (aged 52) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Howard University[1] L.A. Trade–Tech[2] |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1993–2025 |
| Children | 1 |
Sarasvati Ananda Lewis (March 21, 1973 – June 11, 2025) was an American broadcast journalist, veejay and carpenter. She was a two-timeNAACP Image Award recipient.[3] Described as "a bright star who was the voice of a generation", Lewis served as a cultural role model[4] and staple television personality forBET andMTV during the late 1990s.[5] She hosted BET'sTeen Summit and served as aMTV VJ as well as hosting the network's showHot Zone as well as occasionally hosting and frequently co-hostingTotal Request Live. Lewis hostedThe Ananda Lewis Show, anationally syndicated American television talk show that ran for two seasons.[6] The show reported on serious subjects in contrast to more sensationalized contemporary talk shows such as theRicki Lake Show and theJerry Springer Show. After a break from television, she became a correspondent forThe Insider.[7] Lewis returned to television in 2019 to host the revival ofWhile You Were Out onTLC.[8]
In October 2020, Lewis announced that she had been battling stage 3breast cancer for the previous two years.[9] In an October 2024 interview withGood Morning America, Lewis said she wanted people to remember "that I loved hard, and lived loud and didn’t back away from problems. And loved this life and was OK with letting it go too."[10] Lewis died while inhospice care at herLos Angeles home on June 11, 2025, at the age of 52,[11] seven years after her cancer diagnosis.[12]
The second-born daughter of Yvonne Lewis, an account manager forPacific Bell, and Stanley Lewis, acomputer-animation specialist, Sarasvati Ananda Lewis was born on March 21, 1973, inLos Angeles, California.[13] By the time she was two-years-old, the Lewises' marriage ended in divorce and she and her sister, Lakshmi, were relocated by their mother to live with their grandmother inSan Diego.[14] To escape the pain of her failed marriage, her mother then took an extended trip to Europe—leaving Ananda and Lakshmi with their grandmother for about a year. Lewis felt abandoned saying, "It was like she nurtured me and carried me in her womb and then completely left." Lewis often fought with her mother while growing up and rarely saw her father, who remarried. Lewis and her grandmother also frequently "locked horns" while she was growing up.[15]
In 1981, at eight-years-old, she entered herself in the Little Miss San Diego Contest, a beauty pageant, and won. During the talent portion of the competition, Lewis performed a dance routine, which she had choreographed herself, toStevie Wonder andPaul McCartney's ballad "Ebony and Ivory". After her win, Lewis attracted the attention of a talent agent and began working in local theater productions and on television. In fourth grade, she enrolled at theSan Diego School of Creative and Performance Arts (SCPA), a public magnet school, where she remained for nine years.[16] She studied theater, vocal music, photography, and dance from the fourth grade through high school.[17]
She majored in history atHoward University inWashington, D.C., from which she graduatedcum laude in 1995.[18]
While a student at Howard University in 1993, Lewis was featured prominently in the hit R&B music video by fellow HU alumniShai, "Baby, I'm Yours",[19] filmed on campus.[20]
During college Lewis had volunteered as a mentor with at risk youth. She was considering attending graduate school but her pupils encouraged her to audition for BET'sTeen Summit.[21]
Lewis's audition was successful and she became the host ofTeen Summit. For three seasons she discussed serious issues affecting teenagers. In 1996, on an installment of the show entitledIt Takes a Village, Lewis interviewed then-First LadyHillary Clinton, whose book with that title had been published earlier in the year. Also in 1996,Teen Summit was nominated for a CableACE Award, and the next year theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) presented Lewis with anImage Award for her work onBlack Entertainment Television (BET). Soon afterward the cable networkMTV offered Lewis a position as a program host and video jockey.[22] The thought of leavingTeen Summit was painful for her; indeed, several sources quoted her as recalling that she "cried for three weeks" while pondering her choices. In opting to move to MTV, the deciding factor was the possibility of greatly increasing the size of her viewing audience and the potential for influencing America's youth.[23]
Lewis hosted and VJed a variety of shows. She began as one of the hosts ofMTV Live alongsideCarson Daly andToby Amies, the initial flagship show of the network's new era from itsTimes Square studios, and briefly hosted12 Angry Viewers.MTV Live merged withTotal Request to becomeTotal Request Live, a daily top ten video-countdown show where she was a frequent co-host and occasional main host. She also hostedHot Zone, which offered both music videos and Lewis's interviews of musicians and others, and occasionallyMTV Jams.[24] On a notable installment ofHot Zone, she berated the rapperQ-Tip about the number of scantily clad dancers in one of his videos, which she regretted not handling with more nuance.[25] In a reference to Lewis's broadcasting savvy, Bob Kusbit, MTV's senior vice president for production, toldDouglas Century forThe New York Times on November 21, 1999, "In the past our talent was sometimes just pretty people who could read cue cards. But when we brought Ananda to MTV, we decided we were going to do a lot more live television." MTV also called upon Lewis to host other topical programs including two MTV forums on violence in schools, which aired after theColumbine High School massacre and several memorial tributes for the singerAaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001. In 2001, Lewis earned another NAACP Image Award, for her hosting of the MTV specialTrue Life: I Am Driving While Black.[20]
In 1998, while at MTV, Lewis made headlines when she announced that she intended to remainabstinent for at least six months. She said:[21]
I made the decision for selfish reasons, but I'm going public here because I realized I might be able to help other girls, too. I know the kind of drama that being sexually active brings to your life. I felt that if it was good for me to take a break, it might be good for other young girls, too. You see, I think I would be a whole different person if I hadn't had sex so early. Everybody was saying, "Do it!" but nobody ever said,"You don't have to do it". I think hearing that would have made a huge difference in my life.
Lewis became a familiar presence at celebrity-attended events in and aroundNew York City with Douglas Century ofThe New York Times stating: "In the last year, Ms. Lewis has emerged as the hip-hop generation's reigning 'It Girl,' meaning she is not just an MTV personality but a woman whose looks and attitudes have made her perpetually in demand."[21]
In 2000,People included Lewis on its list of the worlds' "50 Most Beautiful People". In 2001, Lewis decided to leave MTV in order to start her own talk show.The Ananda Lewis Show debuted on September 10, 2001, after much advance press in which Lewis was compared toOprah Winfrey. Lewis continued to do special presentations for MTV after her show had begun. Lewis's series which was syndicated byKing World Productions, targeted women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four by addressing such issues asdomestic violence andbreast cancer; it was billed as an alternative to the sensationalism and provocative offerings ofJerry Springer andRicki Lake, whose talk shows were then dominating daytime ratings. Lewis's show aired on someWB andNBC stations before being canceled after about 250 episodes.[26] Lewis later expressed regret for doing the show, reflecting that she felt she was not ready to handle the responsibility of a full-time hosting role.[20]
In 2004, Lewis became the chief correspondent on celebrity subjects for the nationally syndicated, nightly entertainment programThe Insider, a spin-off of the popularEntertainment Tonight.[20]
Also in 2004, Lewis also appeared on the ABC network's reality show calledCelebrity Mole: Yucatán. This reality series won an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement for Enhanced Television. An avid animal lover, Lewis served as co-host of theA&E television-network showAmerica's Top Dog and as a spokesperson for theHumane Society. She was known to frequently introduce her two petchihuahuas to interviewers. She was also a spokesperson for Reading Is Fundamental, a nonprofit literacy group.[citation needed]
According toIMDb, Lewis also served as an actress and producer, known forOn the Line (2001),Nora's Hair Salon II (2008) andMethod & Red (2004).[citation needed]
On October 2, 2020, Lewis announced that she had been diagnosed in 2019 withstage III breast cancer after she conducted a self-exam. In her announcement at the time, she encouraged her followers to be up to date on theirmammograms after revealing that she had not gotten hers leading up to her diagnosis. "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 announcement. "Early detection, especially for breast cancer, changes your outcome. It can save [your] life."[27]
On October 15, 2024, she announced that her cancer had progressed tostage IV after six years. Around that time, she sat down withCNN correspondentsStephanie Elam andSara Sidner—who in 2024 were also diagnosed with breast cancer—to discuss their health journeys.[20]
During their conversation, Lewis opened up to Sidner and Elam, whom Lewis met during her first year atHoward University and whom she counted as a best friend, about the course of treatment she chose. Although Lewis had refused to undergo a physician-recommendeddouble mastectomy, she expressed her ultimate regret over not having earlier consented to the mastectomy her doctors recommended.[28]
In January 2025,Essence published an article stressing that "prevention is the real cure" by Lewis.[29] "I also couldn’t figure out how to fit the double mastectomy, the full chemotherapy and, potentially, the radiation they were telling me to have into my already overwhelmed life," Lewis noted in a timeline of her breast cancer management. "All while managing the major stress of ending a 10-year relationship with the man I loved—my son’s father," Lewis wrote of the treatment-seeking relocations betweenCalifornia andArizona that she embarked upon, which also included a trip to see "an American doctor inMexico." Lewis's open letter addressed the financial and emotional challenges she faced, her healthcare insurance woes, the effect of theCOVID-19 pandemic on her treatment, and her views on quality of life among other topics:
"Going into 2025, I would say to women: Do everything in your power to avoid my story becoming yours. If I had known what I know now 10 years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up here. I would have been cold plunging, exercising consistently, making sure myvitamin D levels were good, detoxing my body on a monthly and yearly basis, andsleeping better. I would’ve been doing all the things I’ve been forced to do now, to keep my body from creating more cancer and remove what it has already made."
Lewis died, surrounded by family, inhospice care at her home inLos Angeles, on June 11, 2025, at the age of 52.[30]
| Year | Award | Category | Work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | CableACE Award | Children's Educational or Informational Special or Series | Teen Summit − "Living on the Street . . . On the Real" | Nominated |
| 1997 | NAACP Image Award | Outstanding Youth Series | Teen Summit − "It Takes a Village" | Won |
| 2000 | Outstanding News, Talk or Information – Special | True Life − "I Am Driving While Black" | Won |
