In the world of entertainment journalism, Amanda Salas is slowly but surely becoming a household name — and it’s easy to see why. The broadcast veteran has graced TV screens for more than a decade, winning over audiences with her charismatic personality, positivity, wit and humor that shine through in everything she does, from red carpet and movie premiere coverage to interviews with Hollywood’s biggest stars. For the past seven years, she’s greeted Angelenos bright and early each morning, reporting on the latest in film, television and pop culture on Fox 11’s Good Day L.A.
But Salas is much more than a journalist. She’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for Toluca Lake, a place she has called home since 2017. She’s also an actor, car enthusiast, Critics Choice Association film critic, Television Academy member, pun champion — and, most importantly, a cancer survivor and advocate.
This June, which happens to be National Cancer Survivor Month, marks five years since Salas’ 2019 diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which she beat in October of that year. The experience changed her life forever. “June is my birthday month and my diagnosis month. The month I was born was the month I was almost like reborn for a different purpose,” she says. “People always say, ‘Why me?’ — and you do say that when you get diagnosed — but then it’s ‘Well, why me? Maybe I was chosen to do something with this diagnosis.’”
Today, as she celebrates a lucky number seven years at her “one-in-a-million” job and living in her dream community, Salas reflects on how far she’s come in her personal and professional journey, recounting her career highs, public battle with cancer and love for life in Toluca Lake.
“Latina on the Scene-a”
Throughout her high school years at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, Salas excelled in journalism and theater, developing an interest in storytelling while taking center stage in productions such as Les Misérablesand Hello, Dolly! These formative years solidified her passions, and upon graduation, she moved to California to continue her studies at Cal State Long Beach with the dream of one day becoming a host and entertainment reporter.
The stars aligned during her senior year in 2008, when she auditioned for the O.C. Register’s web TV entertainment program The Juice. “There were hundreds of girls who came out for this audition; it was very similar to American Idol back in the day when they had the ‘cattle call.’ And so, I went and thought, ‘You know what, what do I have to lose?’” she recalls. The audition was simple: provide commentary on Christina Aguilera having a baby. Salas knew she had to stand out, so she relied on what she knew best: puns. She went up there and said, “Christina Aguilera just had a baby boy; looks like this genie in a bottle is a genie with a bottle.” And the rest was history. “I will always credit a pun as the way I started my career,” she says.
Salas was offered a correspondent role and fill-in host position with the program right before she graduated. “I truly felt blessed in that moment,” she says. “That’s what gave me my first reel, where I interviewed celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Matthew McConaughey, Kevin Bacon and the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County. That’s what kickstarted my career.”
After The Juice, Salas went on to become a host, producer and writer for a variety of media outlets. Notably, she combined her love of cars with the news as an automotive journalist, covering the L.A. Auto Show and traveling around the country to do reporting for Autotrader, Time Warner Cable’s Automotive On Demandand more. This all helped her gain experience in the field and led to her next big break — a correspondent role for the nationally syndicated entertainment show Hollywood Today Live in 2014, which aired on Fox stations.
Salas’ playful, warm and personable reporting style made her a familiar face on the program, where she covered her first Oscars as well as other awards ceremonies and film/TV junkets. She became a fixture in the Hollywood news scene and dubbed herself the “Latina on the Scene-a,” a nickname she says is not only wordplay, but a way to highlight her Hispanic roots and call for more inclusivity in the industry. “I’m very proud of my Latin ancestry, and we are one of the most underrepresented groups in Hollywood and have one of the highest buying powers,” she explains. “So it’s important for me, and I don’t take this lightly. Waking up every single day in L.A., which has such a high and proud Hispanic population, and being one of the only Latina entertainment reporters in the city means a lot to me, and I will always use my voice to help with representation.” A member of the Critics Choice Association, she has become an advocate for diversity as part of the Latino and women’s committees.
Salas joined the Fox 11 L.A. team in 2017, starting as an evening entertainment reporter before transitioning to entertainment anchor/reporter for Good Day L.A. At this point in her professional life, she has done almost everything in the entertainment reporting sphere. Some of the most iconic moments of her career include interviewing Ringo Starr on his birthday, sitting with one of her idols, Rita Moreno, at the Critics Choice Awards and meeting Oprah Winfrey at the Spirit Awards. Salas is also ecstatic to be a small part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having played herself, an entertainment news anchor, in two episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
Ultimately, among her achievements, she notes that “having a thick skin in this industry is something I’m proud of myself for, because there were a lot of days and a lot of moments that weren’t easy, but I chose not to give up.”
Fighting for Her Life
Salas reached a turning point in 2019. She received a job promotion and was riding high on career success, but her personal life was in disarray. She had gotten out of a long-term relationship and had started noticing changes in her health, experiencing a host of unexplainable symptoms such as weight loss, fatigue and facial swelling. In June, two months after her promotion, following multiple hospital visits and misdiagnoses, doctors found a tumor between her heart and lungs and diagnosed her with stage 2 blood cancer — a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma called mediastinal large B cell lymphoma.
“They had to start chemotherapy on me right away,” she recalls. “I was in the emergency room on Monday and started chemo that Thursday. Within less than a week, my life changed right before my eyes. I lost all my hair, and as somebody who’s on camera, that was pretty rough.”
Salas sat with her diagnosis for two weeks — grasping the reality that she was now a 34-year-old cancer patient — before publicly announcing the news on social media. She took medical leave and adopted the nickname “Latina on the Medicina” because of her aggressive treatment plan at City of Hope, which called for six rounds of chemotherapy delivered nonstop five days a week.
In the hospital one day, Salas remembers looking up at the ceiling and telling herself, “If I get through this, I promise that I will pay it forward and help somebody else. It’s the only thing I can do; I have to make this bigger than myself.” She decided to share every step of her journey publicly, taking inspiration from others who showed their chemo port scars on Instagram and made her feel less alone. She thought, “If these women are putting it out there and showing their port scars, it’s only right that I help anyone else I can and put it out there as well. If I can help one person, then it was all worth it.”
Salas “kept it real” as she shared the ups and downs of her treatment with unabashed candor, grace and, of course, a lot of puns. As her hair began to fall out after her first couple weeks of chemo, she chose to celebrate rather than commiserate the moment by hosting a “buzz party” with close colleagues and friends to shave her head. “Every time the razor went through my hair, everyone took a shot of tequila, so in the end, we’re all ‘buzzed,’” she explains with a laugh. This kind of levity in the face of a serious diagnosis is the attitude that kept her afloat throughout chemo. “Cancer is going to change my hair, cancer is going to change my medical history, but cancer is not going to change my spirit,” she says, sharing her mantra at the time.
The story of the party went viral, along with several other posts where Salas proudly rocked her bald head and charted the challenges and successes of her treatment. Her thousands of followers became “Amanda’s Army” and gave her the strength and encouragement she needed to make it through each day.
Along with her social media efforts, Salas reached out to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the largest nonprofit funder of blood cancer research, to help raise money for its Light the Night fundraiser and, in the process, met other survivors and caretakers in the blood cancer community and became a volunteer for the organization.
In October 2019, she rang the bell at City of Hope, signifying the success of her treatment and remission, but not the end of her journey. “It doesn’t end once you get to ring the bell; you still have a responsibility as a survivor to help someone else get that title as well,” she says. “I always want to keep awareness alive for symptoms of lymphoma, and I’m really grateful to City of Hope.” She has since kept her promise. To date, she has helped the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise over $100,000 for blood cancer patients and has become a board member for the organization. She also regularly covers cancer patient stories on Fox 11, even sharing her story and other cancer survivors’ stories in a Fox 11 In-Depth Special that was broadcast last June, and continues to use her social media platform to educate and empower others.
A Love Letter to Home
Toluca Lake served as a haven during Salas’ cancer battle and the COVID pandemic that followed (a period in her life she calls the “candemic”). She was fortunate to have been living in a “perfect pocket of L.A.” — a charming and safe neighborhood with plenty within driving and walking distance, especially the businesses on Riverside Drive. “If you’re lucky enough to call Toluca Lake home, then you’re lucky enough,” she says.
Over the past seven years, Salas and her rescue dog, January Bones, have been enjoying every minute of their time in the community. She loves going on walks with her neighborhood walking group Ladies Who Lunge, supporting local businesses — including Align & Define Pilates Studio, Forman’s, Hungry Crowd, Priscilla’s, Red Maple Cafe, Wildflower Acupuncture, Kreation and the Discovery Shop — and watching the neighborhood transform into a “bona fide Halloween town” every October.
Toluca Lake even played a special role in her engagement in Big Bear last May. “My fiancé bought my engagement ring at Generales. He wanted to get it in Toluca Lake because he knew how much Toluca Lake meant to me,” she shares, adding that her fiancé, Randy, whom she has known for a decade, worked closely with Peter Generales to design the ring. “He thought, ‘Every time we drive or walk by Generales, we’ll get that beautiful memory of our engagement.’” They had an engagement party a month later and held an after-party at Forman’s, celebrating with loved ones while enjoying their favorite pineapple margaritas.
Last December, Salas shined a spotlight on Toluca Lake in honor of its centennial with a Good Day L.A.feature on the neighborhood’s storied past, residents and local business owners “who make the city feel like family.” She says, “It was a love letter to Toluca Lake for me, but it was also such an educational experience, and I wanted to educate the viewers on the rich history of Toluca Lake, because if I found it interesting and fascinating, I knew that other people would as well.”
As she enters a new season of her life, Salas hopes to continue learning even more about her home while showing gratitude to her neighbors for welcoming her and fostering the beauty and uniqueness of their community. “I’ve really gotten a lot of peace from just walking through this neighborhood. There are healing powers in just walking in Toluca Lake,” she says. “Thank you to the neighbors for the pride of ownership in their homes and for being a friendly face to say hello to and having our dogs sniff each other and meet. It’s truly a place I feel blessed to call home.”
