TV host Ananda Lewis, 52, died of cancer on June 11. A Little Miss San Diego beauty queen, Lewis quickly found herself an agent and began working onstage an on TV (she also graduated from Howard University). Beginning in the late ’90s, she hosted such TV shows as MTV Live, Wanna Be a VJ, True Life, Total Request Live, The Insider, and While You Were Out. She had her own 2001-02 talk show, was a Hollywood Squares panelist, and hosted numerous awards shows. MTV’s senior vice president for production Bob Kusbit said that “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.” When first diagnosed, Lewis went for “holistic” and “homeopathic” therapies, explaining that “My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body. I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way.” When the cancer, not surprisingly, spread, she admitted that “Looking back on that, I go, ‘You know what? Maybe I should have.’”
