June 16, 2025
Stephanie Elam is remembering her ‘ride or die,’ Ananda Lewis, who she saw just a day before she lost her battle with breast cancer.
CNN’s Stephanie Elam is remembering her last visit with her “ride or die,” Ananda Lewis, the iconic BET and MTV host who died at 52 from breast cancer.
Elam was emotional with CNN anchor Sara Sidner as she recalled visiting Lewis just one day before her passing on June 11, USA Today reported. Elam shared that she drove straight from an overnight shift covering the Los Angeles protests to be by Lewis’s side and hold her hand. She had planned to return the following day, but Lewis passed away before she could.
“After I got off the air, I looked down and had a message from her beautiful big sister, who has been such a strong champion for her and has kept me abreast of everything. She messaged me and told me that she passed away right before I finished that last hit,” Elam said. “And, so it was too late.
“One thing that I want everyone to know is that she was at peace with this decision,” Elam added of Lewis. “She had come to grips with it.”
Elam, who met Lewis ahead of their freshman year at the acclaimed HBCU Howard University, said the Teen Summit star’s health condition changed quicker than expected.
“We thought we had weeks, and it turned out that it turned into days, and then it was actually just a matter of hours,” Elam said.
Lewis was a standout TV personality in the ’90s and early 2000s. After graduating from Howard University, she got her start hosting BET’s Teen Summit, and by 1997, she had joined MTV, where she became a household name on Total Request Live and Hot Zone. In 2001, she stepped into the spotlight to host her short-lived talk show, The Ananda Lewis Show.
In October, Lewis appeared on CNN with Elam and Sidner following Sidner’s diagnosis of stage 3 breast cancer and spoke about the holistic approach she took to combat the deadly disease.
“The cancer diagnosis caused me to change things in my life I never would have changed otherwise, that I needed to change but would not change,” Lewis said at the time. “And those changes have allowed me access to more of my joy, more of the time.”
Ananda Lewis is survived by her son, Langston Lewis, whom she shared with Harry Smith, Will Smith’s younger brother.
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