Smallville actress Allison Mack who went to prison for role in sex cult speaks out for the first time: ‘I was mean and I was forceful’
Allison Mack, the Smallville star who went to prison for her actions in the Nxivm sex cult, has admitted that she was “abusive” during her time with the group in a new podcast.
Since her release from federal prison approximately two years ago, Mack, 43, has launched a podcast titled “Allison After Nxivm.” Her podcast comments are the first she’s made about her time with the cult since returning to public life.
“I was excited by the power that I felt having these young, beautiful women look to me and listen to me,” she said on the show. “And – yes – the sexuality of it was exciting.”
Mack shot to fame with a starring role in the Superman television series Smallville, which ran for 10 seasons from 2001 to 2010.
She was arrested in 2018 and convicted on sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and racketeering charges a year later. She admitted to manipulating women in the cult into sleeping with its leader, Keith Raniere, who is currently serving 120 years in prison after his conviction on racketeering, sex trafficking, and other crimes.
“I definitely recognize and admit that I was abusing my power and that I was mean and I was forceful,” Mack says in the seventh episode of the series. “But I also can’t negate the fact that there was a part of me that was altruistic and was desperate to help people, and I wanted to be better – and I was willing to do anything to be better in myself and to help other people be better.”
She said her role was to help break down the women’s resistance to sleeping with the cult leader.
“It was my job to relay what to do with him for her growth,” Mack said, speaking of a specific woman in the cult. “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.'”
Natalie Robehmed, the host of the podcast, asked Mack how she became involved in the cult’s sex trafficking. She claimed she was trying to do the “opposite” of coercing women into traumatic sexual encounters with the cult’s leader.
“I was trying to heal sexual trauma,” she said. “And then I turned around and was someone who was supporting it. I mean, that was why it took me a year to plead guilty, because I was like, I can’t face that fact. I can’t face that truth.”
When asked how she became involved in the cult, she says she was influenced to join after another Smallville actor, Kristin Kreuk, took a course offered by the group.
“It was like all she could talk about. She was just like super excited about it, you know?” Mack said.
In 2018, Kreuk said she had no contact with the cult beyond 2013 and that she “had minimal contact with those were were still involved.” She said any allegations that she was involved in any of the illegal activity “are blatantly false.”
Mack revealed that she also slept with Raniere, saying he convinced her that doing so would help her process childhood sexual exploitation that she experienced.
She said the fact that she was a celebrity helped her recruitment efforts.
“I capitalized on the things that I had,” she said. “The success I had as an actor … was a power tool that I had to get people to do what I wanted.”
Mack insists that, despite her actions, she is not a “pervert.”
“People can believe me, or people can think I’m full of s*** and not listen,” she said. “But I feel like I at least have to say it out loud for myself – once.”
