Former Smallville star Allison Mack is back in the spotlight, opening up about her life after NXIVM, her struggle to rebuild, and the complicated feelings she has about returning to acting.
Her recent conversation with Michael Rosenbaum on Inside of You pulls back the curtain on what her world looks like now, from rediscovering creativity to dealing with financial fallout.
In the interview, Mack explained that acting is something she still deeply loves. She shared that she even went back to basics with an improv class just to reconnect with the craft.
“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.”
Mack admitted that even with those small steps, she still longs for the experience of working with great actors again.
“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 Rosenbaum asked if she had made peace with the idea that she may never return to professional acting, she was surprisingly calm about it.
“Yeah, I don’t even think about it.”
She added that even if an acting offer landed in her lap, she wasn’t sure she would take it because her life already feels “full.”
A big part of that fullness comes from the reality she’s had to face since her release. Mack spoke openly about losing all her money, describing what it’s been like to rebuild from the ground up.
“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 reflected on the decade she spent on Smallville, suggesting that all of her earnings from those years were gone. Mack confirmed that. She even lost her New York apartment and found herself realizing just how drastically her life had shifted. She shared an example from the period when she was under house arrest.
“[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.'”
While acting may or may not be part of her future, Mack has found purpose in a completely different direction. Since leaving prison, she has dedicated herself to prison reform and arts education for incarcerated individuals. The experience of being inside changed her perspective entirely.
“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.”
That realization made it difficult for her to return to acting as if nothing had happened. She tried to find her way back to creative work slowly.
“[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.”
Through that work, Mack met the head of another organization, who eventually hired her as a staff member to help build an arts curriculum for people inside the prison system.
Her journey is still unfolding, and whether she ever returns to acting remains uncertain. Regardless, Allison Mack is trying to rebuild in a way that feels meaningful to her, even after losing everything that once defined her life.
