A breathless, self-serious overture on a long redemption path.
The podcast is called Allison After NXIVM. Natalie Robehmed tells the story. Vanessa Grigoriadis helps her. CBC carries it.
It is Allison’s first post-sentencing true confession. She made a nice one in front of Judge Garaufis before he sentenced her for not 14 years like the sentencing guidelines but three years- which meant she was out in 21 months.
She was assigned to FCI Dublin, California – a low-security United States federal prison for female inmates – and is now on probation. The podcast opens with a description of the scene leading up to the day of sentencing. Interspersed between Natalie’s purple narration Allison is interjected with some comments but for purposes of our setup let’s let Natalie tell it.
A Sentencing in Metaphors, Hymns, and Sympathy
Nathalie Robehmed:
“It is a warm, muggy day in New York City in June, 2021, the kind of summer day when the air feels oppressively heavy as if it’s about to smother you. And for Allison Mack the day could not get any heavier. Alison is a famous actress, but she’s famous for something else now, for being prominent in one of the most devastating cults in contemporary history. She spent 12 long years in that cult and now she’s sitting in the back of a car that’s driving towards a Brooklyn courthouse. She’s wearing a black dress that she’s bought specifically for the court date. Her green eyes gaze ahead at what’s to come….
“Allison is here because of her role in NXIVM, the infamous sex cult run by Keith Raniere. Of all the people who’ve become tangled up in NXIVM she’s the most famous of the bunch. The media attention on this case and Allison in particular has been fierce.
“From the car she sees the photographers waiting for her. Everyone has covered this case. It’s international news and a lot of the reporters are focused on Allison, the TV star. She was on the CW for over a decade on the popular show Smallville, she played Clark Kent’s best friend. Now she’s fallen back to earth. She’s tabloid chum. She’s a target.
“(Her friend) Tina is singing a nice choral song in her ear trying to calm her down. This is something Allison’s friends have been doing to ground her for this day…
“But the songs are no use. As soon as Allison gets out of the car onto the sidewalk, she’s like a magnet and the photographers are metal.
“… Allison led women to be branded with Keith Ranier’s initials on the flesh of their bodies. She was a master overseeing women who were her slaves. She had sex with Keith daily. She had threesomes with another member who was also having sex with him. She told women inside the cult that they would reach enlightenment if they did as she did and developed a relationship with Keith. For this, she has been portrayed as a villain as the person who acted as a pimp for Keith. To some she appeared to have been a top lieutenant, but who is Alison Mack? Really? Is she a victim or someone who victimized others…?
Natalie describes the sentencing with some interspliced comments from Mack.
Then scene two (this is all audio) Natalie describes driving to see Allison on December 26, 2024 to interview her with her coproducer Vanessa at a hotel in Long Beach.
Natlaie tells listeners that Mack has rejected every other media offer—magazines, books, documentaries—but has chosen her, specifically, because she “loves podcasts” and no longer feels comfortable on camera.
Episode 1 of the seven part series begins as a mood piece, full of metaphors, overstatement, and a barely concealed desire to rehabilitate Mack by making her trauma larger than everyone else’s. It’s not about what Allison did. It’s about how she feels about what she did.
The Podcast Romanticizes Mack
Natalie slips into her purple voice, framing Allison’s entrance like a costume reveal:
“Today she’s wearing a puffer vest, blue plaid shirt, black lapid-print leggings, Doc Marten boots and thick socks.”
It’s the kind of line delivered not to tell us what Allison looks like, but, it seems, to make the narrator sound observant, cinematic — as if the color of the socks reveals something about a woman convicted of racketeering.
Then more sensory embroidery:
“Her hair is in a messy ponytail with one of those curly hair ties that don’t tangle your hair at night.”
It is an almost comic level of detail for a woman who once branded other women. Natalie follows with emotional framing:
“She’s smiling, her face beaming as she greets us.”
“She’s confident, she’s turning it on and we are being maybe overly friendly too.”
Allison is performing. The interviewers know it and go along with it. Then the final touch: Soft-focus humanity:
“Everyone seems nervous. She talks about her dogs.”
The segue to dogs is beautiful. The safest topic in the world. Allison loves dogs. You love dogs. I love dogs. Her codefendant Lauren Salzman loved them too. She used that better than Allison did and became a dog groomer (the judge even mentioned it – how Lauren turned from exploiting humans to caring for animals – her rehabilition complete.) It worked. Lauren walked away with probation while Allison got prison. But she still loves dog and so do you.
Natalie continues her lovingly embroidered character portrait:
“I have to say she appears younger than her 43 years. Looking at her, you would never guess that she was fresh off years in prison and three and a half years on house arrest.
It’s the kind of line meant to make the journalist sound insightful — the astonishment that a woman can emerge from years in federal prison without looking like a Dickens orphan.
Actually Allison did not actually spend years in prison; she spent 21 months. The three and a half years on home arrest – spent at her parent’s house – was accurate: from shortly after her arrest in April 2018 to shortly after her sentencing in July 2021, she was confined to home
Natalie drifts back to her favorite purple and the poetic wound:
“But that’s how most scars are. You can’t see them fully clothed.”
Too bad this was audio only. The metaphor begs for a slow zoom: Allison is the one carrying invisible damage, rather than the ones branded.
Natalie:
“As we settle in a hotel room, sitting opposite each other, (with) the quiet thrum of the street below…
“I decide to start at the beginning — the beginning of her life.”
And listener, and the interviewers alike thus begin a spiritual excavation, not an examination of criminal acts. We are entering a seven-part redemption arc, starting with a mythic origin story: Allison not as a perpetrator to investigate, but as a wounded main character whose scars need discovering.
In the next in this Frank Report series on Allison After NXIVM – if I ever get to it – we will get into Allison’s origin story.
