The Smallville actor Allison Mack says she was once riveted by the influence she wielded through her role in the Nxivm sex cult – though it eventually sent her to federal prison, and she now realizes it was “abusive”.
“I was excited by the power that I felt having these young, beautiful women look to me and listen to me,” Mack, 43, maintains in a new podcast series titled Allison After Nxivm, which contains her first public remarks since her release from prison about two years ago. “And – yes – the sexuality of it was exciting.”
Mack offered that recollection after pleading guilty in 2021 to charges that she manipulated women to serve Nxivm’s leader, Keith Raniere, who was ultimately convicted of sex-trafficking crimes. She was released from a federal prison near San Francisco in 2023 while Raniere was sentenced to 120 years behind bars.
The seven-episode Allison After Nxivm, produced by CBC’s Uncover, in part recounts how Mack went from joining the cast of the popular Superman show Smallville in 2001 to recruiting women into Nxivm by leaning on the celebrity that her work afforded her.
Mack on the podcast said she was introduced to Nxivm by her Smallville co-star Kristin Kreuk – and then was invited to meet Raniere, the head of the organization that billed itself as a self-improvement group in upstate New York.
Raniere eventually convinced Mack that being “physically intimate with him” could aid her in grappling with the fallout of childhood sexual exploitation to which she had been subjected, she said on the podcast. She explains how she effectively was indoctrinated into getting other women to join Nxivm, where they were brainwashed, branded with Raniere’s initials and forced to have sex with him.
“I capitalized on the things that I had,” Mack said on the podcast, whose publication Monday gained coverage from outlets such as Vanity Fair, NBC and E! News. “The success I had as an actor … was a power tool that I had to get people to do what I wanted.”
Despite making it a point to say she was among those who were brainwashed, Mack acknowledges that she victimized women, too, saying she was “emotionally aggressive” and “callous” to them.
“I was not kind, and … I was abusive,” Mack – who moved to the US from Germany at two years old – adds.
Mack said in one particular instance she was “the go-between [for Raniere] and this person”.
“It was my job to relay what to do with him for her growth,” Mack recalls. “The more she said, ‘I’m scared, I don’t want to do it,’ the more I would say, ‘You need to do it, and the longer you wait, the more consequences there will be.’
“The coercion started, and the pressure and the pressure and the pressure … And then it was – like – rape.”
Federal officials charged Mack for her involvement in Nxivm in April 2018. She pleaded guilty and helped authorities mount evidence as they prosecuted Raniere, who was sentenced in October 2020.
Mack received her sentence in June 2021 at a hearing during which she repudiated Raniere.
“I made choices I will forever regret,” Mack said in court that day – while also expressing “remorse and guilt”.
On Allison After Nxivm, Mack said: “People assume I’m this pervert. But that’s not what happened – what it was for me.
“People can believe me, or people can think I’m full of shit and not listen. But I feel like I at least have to say it out loud for myself – once.”
