‘Smallville’ Star Allison Mack Gives First Interview on Surviving the Abusive Sex Cult NXIVM and Going to Prison: ‘I Don’t See Myself as Innocent’
Allison Mack — the former “Smallville” star, who became known as the infamous enabler of NXIVM leader Keith Raniere as the Ghislaine Maxwell to his Jeffrey Epstein — is finally telling her story in the new CBC podcast “Allison After NXIVM.” The seven-episode podcast, part of CBC’s “Uncover,” premiered on Nov. 10, is hosted by Natalie Robehmed and produced by Vanessa Grigoriadis of Campside Media.
Mack, now 43, was a child actor who grew up in Long Beach, California, eventually moving to Vancouver to star on “Smallville” — the story of the teenaged Clark Kent — which ran for nine seasons on The WB (later The CW) beginning in 2001. In the first episode of “Allison After NXIVM,” she recounts that it was through co-star Kristin Kreuk that she first went to a NXIVM meeting in 2006 and embraced it quickly (and later fell under the spell of Raniere).
Robehmed lays out in the premiere episode what the podcast’s goals are, which is to answer, “Who is Allison Mack, really? Is she a victim or someone who victimized others?” Mack is, as “Allison After NXIVM” meticulously details, of course, both victim and victimizer. She was completely brainwashed by Raniere, and became part of a harem of women who serviced his every need. She had coercive sex with him daily, and gave up her life and career to move closer to NXIVM’s headquarters in Albany, New York.
But as Raniere’s right-hand woman, Mack was also a ruthless taskmaster within the group. She encouraged other women to go to him for the same kind of sexual “help” Raniere was giving her, meaning that she was sending them off to be raped by him. Within the NXIVM women’s group DOS, which Raniere was secretly in charge of, Mack had “slaves,” and enforced what they ate (minimally) and when, as well as every action they took. She also recruited women for NXIVM, including the high-profile former member India Oxenberg, whose mother, actor Catherine Oxenberg, was one of the first to speak out about the cult.
For these crimes, Mack went to federal prison for nearly two years and was released in July 2023. It was during her prosecution, she recounts in the podcast, that she slowly began to wake up to what Raniere had done — and to what she had done while under his spell.
The abuses of NXIVM were first exposed widely in the New York Times investigation “Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded,” in October 2017. In that story, NXIVM whistleblower Sarah Edmondson, who was in DOS, detailed her experience in the group. After that story, the tides turned against Raniere, and he was arrested in Mexico in 2018 (Mack was also on the premises).
HBO’s “The Vow,” a docuseries directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, premiered in August 2020 and became a pandemic success, popularizing the cult’s story. In both “The Vow” and in its second season in 2022, Mack was a shadowy, mysterious figure (Raniere had everything filmed), often in the background. Raniere was convicted in 2019 and is currently serving a 120-year sentence for sex trafficking, racketeering, fraud and other crimes.
“Allison After NXIVM” begins with Mack recounting her sentencing day in June 2021, during which she describes her family having to listen to what she’d done. “Oh, my God, my poor brother behind me, having to hear this about his sister,” she says through tears. “My poor mom! I’m so sorry, you guys. I can take it, but like fuck, you guys, I’m so sorry. I don’t see myself as innocent, and they were.”
It goes through Mack’s present, in which she has married and is pursuing a master’s degree in social work. The carefully reported project, as often happens, has received blowback online for giving Mack a platform. But as Robehmed says in the first episode, “It Happened in Vancouver,” Mack received countless offers to tell her story, but had turned all of them down.
“Allison has not spoken publicly since her incarceration,” Robehmed says. “She’s had lots of offers, but always said no — until now. She wants to tell her story in podcast form, because she loves podcasts, and because she’s no longer comfortable in front of cameras like she used to be.”
There are cushier platforms that Mack could have chosen, of course, and people who actually listen to it will realize that “Allison After NXIVM” challenges Mack at every turn. Additionally, the podcast has the first-ever interview with Lauren Salzman, the daughter of Nancy Salzman, NXIVM’s co-founder. Salzman was sentenced in 2021 to time served and five years of probation, after having pleaded guilty and testifying against Raniere (who’d also been her lover) at his trial.
