Allison Mack. Image Source: THR
Allison Mack joined the Nxivm cult to become a great actress.
In a recent podcast titled "Infamous: Inside America's Biggest Scandals," journalists Vanessa Grigoriadis and Gabriel Sherman discussed actress Allison Mack's final days in the Nxivm Sex Cult.
The actress revealed this in a 2017 interview session with Vanessa Grigoriadis, who was unsure of her participation in the sex cult at the time. Allison clarified that she managed to join the infamous cult Nxivm since she thought its co-founder, Keith Raniere, might help her become a great actress once again and that she decided to move to Albany to fulfil that void and find her heart again. If that makes perfect sense, she continued by stating that it had faded away.
Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman founded Nxivm in 1998 as a personal development company offering "Executive Success Programs" and a variety of methods pledging self-improvement with an importance placed on trying to bring more pleasure into people's lives. Daughters of late philanthropist and Seagrams heir Edgar Bronfman Sr., Clare and Sara Bronfman made it to the headlines after they joined the group.
Former members came forward, asserting they had been completely brainwashed into a distorted sex-slave cult in which women were labeled with Keith Raniere's initials and forced to have sexual relations with him. Keith Raniere was convicted to 120 years in prison in 2019, which has been recently upheld by an appeals court. Allison Mack was given a three-year sentence in prison two years later after admitting guilt to charges of duping women into being sex slaves for Keith Raniere.
During the interview, Allison did mention that she asked Keith if he could enable her to become a great actress again as she had started to feel like a fraud but the actress maintained her innocence while trying to speak with Grigoriadis. Allison Mack claimed that Raniere wasn't the head of a harem and that she wasn't not trying to recruit young, beautiful young women to be his sex slaves, referring to the situation as "The Crucible" or the McCarthy trials, with allegations flying around like wildfire.
Friends who were particularly worried that she was implicated in a cult put more pressure on her to leave the group. She said she tried to talk to them, requesting them to listen to what they had been doing, but her friends claimed she was indoctrinated or sick. Allison said she was just moving around with herself, beginning to wonder if she was crazy or if she was just one of those horrible people individuals read about who commits horrible things and appear to think that they are doing them for God. She acknowledged that she had many such conversations with herself. Eventually, she said that she just sat quietly and, like, started to look at her life and her connections, and she looked at every one of the things she had recorded, journal articles that she had managed to keep, things she had done in the last few years, and it was so incredibly consistent.
Vanessa Grigoriadis also spoke to Keith Raniere, who strongly denied branding women with his initials, trying to compare the practice to historically black fraternities. When they compare it to the Omega Psi fraternity; they had one of the branches on campus where he attended college adding that African Americans have an Omega on their logo. Omega is Michael Jordan's brand and they brand these things to make them stand out, and they make them until they puff up and roughly the same thing. A group of 10 or 15 suburban women, with an average age of 40, come together and decide to start a little hip brand. This wouldn't be news if these were men. He said that he assumed that the fact that it involves women and that it tends to make news reinforces, sadly, a negative stereotype of women.
Keith Raniere was sentenced with 120 years in prison. Image Source: NewYork Times
Nancy Salzman was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in September 2021 for her unconditional support of Keith Raniere, as she brutally aimed his critiques and foes. Clare was convicted to more than six years in prison by a judge, even though federal sentencing laws called for the heiress to receive up to 27 months behind bars.
A former member of Nxivm, a now-dismantled organization, Nicki Clyne, however, said in an interview with Page Six that contrary to what most people have believed about Keith, he is a very joyful and kind and humorous person. She also added that she has been barred from communicating with Keith while he is in jail noting that she misses just being able to have conversations with him about life, philosophy, about deeper existential issues of why they are here. Nicki mentioned that she really always valued his opinions and his thoughts on things and she just thinks he’s a very misunderstood person.
Nicki added that people are conflating an organization with thousands of people with Keith's private sex life noting that according to her, every woman who had relationship with him did so because they wanted to. The Nxivm episodes of "Infamous" from Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment drop on December 29.
