Allison Mack, the former Smallville star who was jailed for her role working for a notorious sex cult, has revealed what life is like following her early release from prison.
The 43-year-old is ready to confront her past after being jailed in 2021 over her involvement in NXIVM, a self-help organization that served as a front for a pyramid scheme and sex cult led by founder Keith Raniere.
Although herself a victim of Raniere, Mack nevertheless spent years as a high-profile enforcer for the group, using her celebrity status to recruit women into a secret sect of NXIVM known as Dominus Obsequious Sororium (“master over slave”), where they were forced to serve as Raniere’s “sex slaves” and were starved, blackmailed and branded with the cult leader’s initials.
Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in 2019 and expressed remorse for her actions at her sentencing, apologizing to the victims and calling her involvement “the biggest mistake and greatest regret of my life.”
“I am sorry to those of you that I brought into NXIVM,” she wrote at the time. “I am sorry I ever exposed you to the nefarious and emotionally abusive schemes of a twisted man.”
Mack was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021, but was released early in July 2023 after serving 21 months. She has since been studying for a master’s degree in social work as she attempts to get her life back on track.
As part of her efforts to piece her life back together, Mack discussed her situation for the first time on “Allison After NXIVM,” a seven-part podcast from CDC that seeks to examine whether the former star was “a victim or someone who victimized others.”
In an emotional moment during the first episode, Mack breaks down in tears as she recalls hearing her family listen to what she’d done in court.
“Oh, my God, my poor brother behind me, having to hear this about his sister,” Variety reports. “My poor mom! I’m so sorry, you guys. I can take it, but like f---, you guys, I’m so sorry. I don’t see myself as innocent, and they were.”
Handing her his sentence, Mack recalled the judge had commented on “the fact that I seemed callous and laughed at people’s pain and led people in negative directions, and that that was not acceptable,” Entertainment Weekly reports.
In June 2025, Mack married a former neo-Nazi named Frank Meeink, 50, who she met at a dog park in 2024.
Meeink, who previously had the words “skin head” tattooed on his knuckles and a “flaming swastika on his neck,” is interviewed for the podcast.
Despite being in and out of prison, including serving three years for “nearly killing” a man when he was 17, Meeink now works for a non-profit helping connect homeless people with resources and has also testified at a House subcommittee in 2020 on white supremacy in policing.
Mack was previously married to actress Nicki Clyne, a NXIVM member, from February 2017 to December 2020.
Elsewhere in the podcast, the former actress opened up on using her celebrity status to lure unsuspecting victims into Raniere’s cult.
“I think that I capitalized on the things I had. And so the success I had as an actor, I think I did capitalize on that, yeah,” she told the podcast. “And it was a power tool that I had to get people to do what I wanted... I think that I was very effective in moving Keith’s vision forward.”
Raniere was jailed in 2020 and sentenced to 120 years in prison after being convicted of multiple sex trafficking, racketeering, and wire fraud charges. Prosecutors claim he remains unrepentant to this day and denies the allegations against him.
Others, however, feel Mack is getting off too lightly. Ahead of her sentencing in 2021, a former victim of NXIVM told the Daily Beast her light sentence was “devastating.”
“Indirectly and directly, she made scores of women suffer. It would be really sad to see her get away with it because she saved her own skin.”
