Allison Mack became famous for her role as Chloe Sullivan in Smallville. Seven years after the series ended, Mack was arrested for her ties to the infamous cult NXIVM, led by Keith Raniere. In 2021, Mack was sentenced to three years in a federal prison, of which she served two. The former actress has now returned to the public eye.
Following the release of a podcast retelling her story with NXIVM, Mack sat down for an in-depth interview on Inside of You, hosted by her former Smallville co-star, Michael Rosenbaum. During the conversation, she was asked if she saw herself acting again. Mack stated she did, as she missed acting to the point where she had joined an improv class:
"Yeah, I really miss acting a lot. I mean, I just took an improv class—a beginning improv class [...] and it was a blast. It was so fun. It's really nice to act without having to worry about what I look like. It's really nice to act without having to worry about whether or not I'm gonna get a callback. Like, just to act, for fun. It's just so fun to do. And so, I think that I will always have that in my life, because I think it's just good for me. And when I teach, we act. Like, we're doing improv, putting together scenes, and there's something really lovely about that."
Still, despite that, Mack said she missed her former acting endeavors: "I miss working with really good actors. Doing really good work. But I don't know how to be an actor without doing it the way I used to do it." When asked if she had accepted the possibility that she wouldn't be able to act professionally again, Mack said: "Yeah, I don't even think about it." She then said that, if an acting opportunity came to her, she wouldn't necessarily take it due to feeling like her life is "full."
Later in the interview, Mack also revealed she lost all of her money: "I have moments where I'm like, 'Man, this is hard.' Because I lost everything, you know? I lost everything. And so, dealing with how hard you have to work to keep your health insurance... I mean, I have residuals, which is amazing, and has afforded me a lot of freedom, but it's not what I used to have."
Rosenbaum then said: "Yeah, for all those years. You were on Smallville for ten years. And probably, every cent was gone." Mack confirmed that was the case, and revealed she lost her New York apartment. Following that, she told an anecdote that made her realize how much her financial situation had changed:
"[You] know, it's so funny, Michael, I used to ride my bike to school when I was [under] house arrest. [...] And I used to ride my bike to and from school, and I didn't have my own bike, so I borrowed my mom's bike. And I remember biking uphill to school, thinking, 'Maybe for Christmas this year, I'll get my own bike.' And I was like, 'Oh, my God, you used to drive BMWs that you would trade in every two years, and now you're dreaming of having your own bike that someone gives you for Christmas because you can't afford to buy it yourself.'"
With her acting career seemingly having come to an end, Mack said she is now working on prison reform to rehabilitate incarcerated individuals. Aside from that, however, the Smallville actress says she's also working as a staff member for an organization that teaches art to people in prison.
Regarding what led her to that new career path, Rosenbaum asked her if she was involved in prison reform willingly, or if she had gotten involved with it as part of some sort of community service. Mack replied she was inspired to do so following her incarceration:
"I couldn't unsee what I had seen when I was incarcerated. [...] Which is that these are really good people who will forever carry this scarlet letter of incarceration, and they don't have what I have, which is people who believe in them. And we don't pay attention to mental health; we don't train our staff properly when it comes to people who run prisons. We don't have proper programming in there."
Mack said that, after realizing that, she began taking acting classes: "[I] was like, 'How do I come home and go back to being an actor? How do I come home and just forget that that experience happened? And so, I came home and I went back to school. And then, I missed acting. I missed it. A lot. And so, I took a beginning Shakespeare class. [...] And, while I was in the class, the teacher was like, 'You're not a beginner, why are you here?' And I told her a little bit of my story, and she put me in touch with a friend of hers who has an organization that teaches theater arts in prison. All creative arts. We do poetry and painting, and so I started teaching with them."
Mack said she then met the head of another organization, who hired her as a staff member to develop an arts curriculum for people in prison and teach them.