Smallville fans still remember Allison Mack as the energetic and loyal Chloe Sullivan. Who could forget her? She was the young teen who secretly fell in love with Clark Kent before he was Superman. Now at 43, she’s speaking about a very different and darker part of her life, one she describes as an “insidious little community.” On Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast Inside of You, Allison Mack finally sat across from her former co-star and tried to unpack how the NXIVM cult swallowed her life for over a decade. And it’s as moving as you’d expect.
“I was involved for 12 years,” she told Rosenbaum. “And stuff didn’t start to get really dysfunctional and illegal until the eighth or ninth year that I was involved.” That slow slide into darkness remains one of the hardest parts for her to explain. She compared it to an abusive relationship she once experienced. One red flag gets brushed aside. Then another. And another. And another. Until she convinced herself, “Oh, okay. I can figure out how to make this okay in my head.” Before long, the young actress was doing things she never imagined and calling it normal.
Back in the 2000s, NXIVM marketed itself as a New York self-help group promising personal and professional development. Behind the curtain was Keith Raniere, the group’s leader who insisted people call him Vanguard. Mack became one of the group’s most visible faces. Her success on Smallville and Wilfred gave her a kind of recruiting power that Raniere took full advantage of. She acknowledges that now, admitting she used her celebrity status as “a power tool to get people to do what she wanted.”
The story took a horrifying turn as NXIVM split into a secret inner circle led by so-called “slave masters.” Women were branded. Sex was mandated. And Raniere was the one in control of everything. Mack said none of that showed up on day one. “It wasn’t like it was all dark and all bad and all abusive right out the gate. It was great and then it was not great.”
When the implosion finally happened, it happened fast, too. Raniere was hit with charges including sex trafficking and received a 120-year sentence in 2020. Mack received three years of supervised release and two years in prison after her 2021 racketeering conspiracy conviction. She also spent three and a half years under house arrest.
She told Rosenbaum, “I yo-yoed back and forth between I’m the worst human being on the planet… and then I would go back and I’d be like, ‘Well, no, I had good intentions here.’” She’d look through old journal entries and try to reconcile who she was with who she became. There was a tug-of-war inside her heart and mind.
Mack also described Raniere as “really good at manipulating people,” but she wasn’t trying to give him credit. More like acknowledging how people searching for meaning can get pulled into something that feels supportive before it traps them. “Everybody stays connected to each other and everybody’s reinforcing the belief system that everybody has,” she said.
She doesn’t deny power played a role in keeping her there either. “I won’t lie and say that power didn’t feel good.” That honesty might be why this interview with her Smallville co-star feels different. Mack isn’t excusing anything. She’s just trying to understand how she got into this mess herself.
And huge kudos to Michael Rosenbaum for allowing her to speak openly and tell her side of the story. In fact, one of the most emotional moments in the interview is where she thanked the Lex Luthor actor for the chance to be interviewed. She complimented him on being a loving person who has always been supportive.
It’s such a great moment that you’ll actually wish Smallville had some form of a reunion special. Maybe if Tom Welling can actually get his animated TV series off the ground, it could happen. It seems like Lex and Chloe are on good footing. Maybe the rest of the gang needs to talk about forgiveness and understanding too.
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