Smallville Star Joined A Sex Cult To Become A Better Actor
Smallville star Allison Mack, found guilty of recruiting for a sex cult, originally joined to become a better actress and her whole insane story is the subject of a new podcast.
Allison Mack, most well known as an actress for playing Chloe Sullivan on Smallville during the entire decade-long run of the hit series, might actually be even better known today as a leader of a sex cult. The NXIVM sex cult will be the focus of the new episodes of Infamous, a podcast run by Vanessa Grigoriadis and Gabriel Sherman, two journalists exploring some of the most explosive stories of the last 20 years, focusing on the role of investigative journalists. Over the last few years, the saga of NXIVM ended with the principal culprits standing trial, including Mack, and the entire story is absolutely insane, sounding like a discarded Desperate Housewives script.
On the surface, NXIVM was not advertised as a sex cult, because no one does that, and in fact, it was a legitimate business founded by Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman. Originally, the focus was on self-improvement and “Executive Success Programs” (ESP), which is what led Allison Mack to join the group in 2006, at the behest of Smallville co-star, Kristin Kreuk, who played Lana Lang on the series. An unearthed interview featured on Infamous with Mack, conducted in 2017, features the actress explaining that she joined the program in order to improve as an actor.
Allison Mack, six years after Smallville’s cancellation, said “I moved to Albany (NXIVM headquarters) to fill that emptiness and find the soul of myself again, if that makes sense, as it had fizzled. I asked Keith if he would help me become a great actress again because I felt like I was a fraud.” While she was not one of the original members of NXIVM, Mack quickly rose through the ranks of the organization, becoming one of Raniere’s most trusted lieutenants, and a primary recruiter for DOS, an inner-circle of NXIVM that branded female members.
Smallville star Allison Mack on joining a sex cult: “I moved to Albany (NXIVM headquarters) to fill that emptiness and find the soul of myself again, if that makes sense, as it had fizzled. I asked Keith if he would help me become a great actress again because I felt like I was a fraud.”
While NXIVM had been considered a pyramid scheme, and also a sex cult, for years prior to the establishment of DOS, it was a multitude of sex crimes related to the inner circle’s behavior that brought down the whole organization. Sarah Edmondson, a Canadian-based actress, was inducted by Allison Mack into DOS, a process that included the Smallville actress holding her down while a NXIVM doctor used a cauterizing pen to apply a brand. Edmondson turned whistleblower, escaped from the cult, and went public with her accusations, resulting in swift charges being filed by the state of New York.
The sheer scale of the absolutely bonkers NXIVM sex cult will hopefully make for some exciting episodes of Infamous. Allison Mack, for her involvement over the years, was recently sentenced to three years in prison, a far cry from the Smallville soundstage in Vancouver. To her credit, the one time CW star did leave NXIVM when friends convinced her she was in a cult, but by then, the damage was done and her original intention of becoming a better actress was long, long forgotten.
