CNN Correspondent Stephanie Elam Gets Emotional Over Ananda Lewis’ Passing

CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam joined her friend and fellow CNN correspondent Sara Sidner on air on Thursday (June 12) to discuss their late friend Ananda Lewis, the former MTV VJ who died on Wednesday (June 11).

The three women previously got together in October 2024 for a conversation about cancer treatment. In the discussion, Sidner revealed how she underwent a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation. Lewis, who lived with stage IV cancer for a number of years, opted not to get surgery and chose a holistic method of treatment.

On Thursday’s broadcast, Elam said, per People, “One thing I want everyone to know is that [Lewis] was at peace with this decision. She had come to grips with it.”

An emotional Elam revealed how she’d visited Lewis the day before her passing, noting how her decline was rapid. “We thought we had weeks, and turned out that it turned into days… and it turned out it was just a matter of hours. It happened very quickly how things changed.”

Elam read out Lewis’ final text message to her live on air. “She texted me and said things had taken a different turn than she would have liked,” Elam stated before reading the message. “This is part of the text she sent me: ‘You know my feelings on this. We all go. These bodies are on loan and must be returned. We come in love and choose to leave it with love as well.’ And then she goes on to say, ‘I love you, my wonderful lifelong bestie of besties.'”

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Lewis rose to fame in 1997 when she became an MTV VJ, hosting the likes of Total Request Live and Hot Zone. Once dubbed “the hip-hop generation’s reigning It Girl” by The New York Times, Lewis was a familiar face on the music network throughout the late 1990s. She left MTV in 2001 to launch her own daytime program, The Ananda Lewis Show.

Elam described Lewis as her “ride or die,” though she noted she could be stubborn. “I love my girl, but she was hard-headed,” she said of Lewis’ approach to her cancer treatment. “She wanted to do it her own way despite the fact that so many of us close to her wanted her to try the way that [Sidner] did it. But this is what she wanted to do and she was totally at peace with it.”