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- The Vow: Here Are the Celebrities Known For Being Involved With NXIVM
The Vow: Here Are the Celebrities Known For Being Involved With NXIVM
HBO’s new documentary, The Vow, is a true-crime project at its core, taking on the chilling scandals of the NXIVM organization. Because the group recruited wealthy women, the sex cult and pyramid scheme underlying the self-help dogma of NXIVM also intersected with celebrity culture. Yes, cofounder Keith Raniere was at the center of it all, and he had a reputation for coercing women into sex and free labor for the organization. But Raniere’s second hand was none other than Allison Mack, who’s best known for her decade-long run on Smallville as Chloe Sullivan. And Mack certainly wasn’t the only Hollywood star tied to NXIVM. Ahead, we’ve compiled a list of the celebrities with links to the infamous cult.
Allison Mack
Mack was known to be Raniere’s second-in-command. While working on Smallville, she became involved with Raniere’s company Jness, which was formed to “promote the furtherance and empowerment of women throughout the world.” Smallville costar Kristin Kreuk first brought her along to a Jness meeting in 2006, around the time she met Raniere and his co-conspirators. Mack eventually became a recruiter for Raniere’s inner circle, DOS, a “sisterhood” in which women were coerced to have sex with Raniere. In fact, Mack, in a New York Times interview, claimed to have come up with the idea for branding people during the DOS initiation process. In NXIVM’s inner circle, “masters” recruited “slaves” who could become masters when they recruited more members. Mack was arrested in April 2018. A year later, she pleaded guilty to racketeering charges relating to her role in NXIVM’s sex-trafficking case. Mack currently awaits her sentence.
Kristin Kreuk
Mack’s Smallville costar, Kristin Kreuk, who portrayed Lana Lang, was also involved with NXIVM, though, according to her, to a lesser extent. Around the time abuse allegations surfaced, Kreuk published a statement on Twitter. She said that at age 23, she had taken the organization’s self-help courses to overcome her shyness. Kreuk asserted that she was never in the organization’s inner circle and “never experienced any illegal or nefarious activity.” Actress Sarah Edmondson, a top NXIVM recruiter who became a whistleblower, backed Kreuk’s claim on Twitter. Kreuk currently stars on Canadian legal drama Burden of Truth.
Sarah Edmondson
Known for her work on Stargate SG-1, Canadian actress Sarah Edmondson was recruited in 2005 and left in 2017. A star recruiter who originally joined for the self-help courses, she brought over 2,000 members to the organization. Deeply involved in the organization, she even started a branch in Vancouver.
Edmondson finally left NXIVM when she learned about DOS and became branded. She became a key whistleblower regarding the cult’s dark realities, publishing details in her 2019 memoir, Scarred. In recent years, she’s had parts in series and TV movies, such as the role of Nora on Salvation.
Nicki Clyne
Battlestar Galactica actress Nicki Clyne married Allison Mack in 2017. Personally recruited by Edmondson, Clyne had been a NXIVM member for well over a decade, and it’s been said that she quit her TV gig to join Raniere. She’s considered a part of Raniere’s inner circle but has not been named as a co-conspirator. Clyne has not posted on her main social media pages since 2018.
Catherine Oxenberg
Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg heard about NXIVM from a friend and recommended it to her daughter, India, who was about to start her own business in 2011. Oxenberg believed that NXIVM was a leadership organization, but eventually noticed that something was off with India when she got more deeply involved with the cult. Following Raniere’s arrest in 2018, Oxenberg’s daughter left NXIVM. Later that year, Oxenberg released a book, Captive: A Mother’s Crusade to Save Her Daughter From a Terrifying Cult.
“First, she seemed more distant, more distracted, more serious, kind of burdened,” she said in an interview with California Live. “But it was slow and I wouldn’t see her and she would pretend that she could come and go as she pleased, but the truth is they had her on a very tight rein and they had a lot of control and the control became absolute.”
Grace Park
Known for her roles in Battlestar Galactica and Hawaii Five-0, Park has been connected to NXIVM, but not much is known about her involvement in the organization. She reportedly left the group in 2017 around the time news about DOS broke. According to Vice, former members said that Park and Kreuk had significant roles in the organization before they left. Park currently stars on A Million Little Things.