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It’s always interesting when Smallville makes its way back into the news. The long-running WB/The CW series was an institution, both among DC fans and teen drama fans, for quite a while.
In recent years, some real-life events surrounding the show’s ensemble cast have overshadowed much of what happened on the show, with Allison Mack’s involvement in the NXIVM cult being chief among them. Mack, who starred as newly-created character Chloe Sullivan on Smallville, spent 21 months in prison for her role in the group, after initially being arrested in 2018 on charges of sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy.
There are entire podcasts and HBO docuseries dedicated to the stories of NXIVM victims, which have gone pretty in-depth about the horrors brought on by Mack and the cult’s founder, Keith Raniere. But as of late, Mack has been attempting to share her side of the story… and is now doing so on one of her Smallville co-stars’ podcast.
This week, Mack was a guest on Inside of You, the interview podcast hosted by former Lex Luthor actor Michael Rosenbaum. While Rosenbaum has had countless Smallville stars on the show over the years, largely to recount their filming experiences, that topic was not really brought up in Mack’s interview. Instead, the interview focused on Mack’s time in NXIVM… and people are not happy about it.
Why are we doing this?
This wasn’t the first time Mack and Smallville have been brought back up lately, as her appearance on the CBC podcast Allison After NXIVM arguably threw one of her other co-stars, Kristin Kreuk, under the bus. But this Inside of You appearance, and the fact that Mack gets over an hour to reframe the situation in her perspective, has kicked up a lot of emotions among listeners and fans.
The fact of the matter is: a lot of people were hurt by what happened in NXIVM, and Mack allegedly played a massive role in what happened. The legal and cultural fallout of it lasted years, but was able to at least center the victims and their stories wherever possible. Rosenbaum even previously used Inside of You to do the same, having former member Sarah Edmondson on the show in 2020.
And now, just when it seemed like the proverbial dust had settled, Mack has been getting a public platform to spin the situation from her perspective. As a result, debates that raged for years are now resurfacing: exactly how responsible was Mack in what happened, whether or not her prison sentence matched the gravity of her crimes (especially when Raniere was sentenced to 120 years), how to reconcile with your childhood idol being involved in something so horrifying. It’s just making things more complicated than they need to be, not to mention triggering for the victims, who Mack and Raniere referred to as their “slaves.”
The episode does highlight that this situation still has a lot of difficult things to reconcile with. Mack refers to herself as both “a victim and a perpetrator”, reveals that she experienced suicidal ideation, and mentions that she’s still working through the emotions she feels towards herself and Raniere. Rosenbaum also admits, during the episode, that he was shocked to hear the allegations against Mack when they were first made public years ago.
It’s fine for those complicated emotions to be felt, especially among two people who have known each other for the majority of this century. But that doesn’t mean that those emotions need to be highlighted in such a public way, and that the rest of us need to buy into Mack’s “redemption tour.”
(featured image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Myra Drake
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