‘Seduced’s Creators Want Their Docuseries to Be a Warning

When it was first reported that the alleged self-help company NXIVM was harboring a secret sex cult, the story was handled with salacious interest. It wasn’t until this year that the general public has changed its tune as people have come to understand the full extent of Keith Raniere’s crimes and manipulations. This empathetic rewriting of history is partially thanks to STARZ’s latest docuseries Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult.

Deeply vulnerable and well-researched, Seduced follows former NXIVM member and DOS survivor India Oxenberg as she opens up about her time within both the company and its sex cult. The four-part documentary reframes this shocking story from a perversely interesting true crime case to study into indoctrination and how anyone can be manipulated. It’s the series creators, Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner, who helped orchestrate this change of perspective. By talking with Decider these filmmakers shared how they created an environment that supported their survivors, what it was like working with Oxenberg, and what they hope viewers will take away from any documentary about NXIVM.

Decider: My first question has to do with Keith Raniere being sentenced to 120 years in prison. What were both of your reactions?

Cecilia Peck: We felt so proud of everybody who spoke there and used their voices and contributed to making sure that he got the sentence he deserved. India [Oxenberg] was there. It took a lot of courage to do that.

Inbal B. Lessner: I sat in that courtroom, and when I heard those testimonies, all I could do was say, “Motherfucker.” I could not believe what I was hearing and how he managed to manipulate all these people for his sadistic needs and gain. I think the court spoke very clearly. It’s well-deserving. We tried to explain in our series, at least from one woman’s perspective and other women who intersect with her storyline along the way, how deeply troubling the crimes of NXIVM were and the trauma endured from that.

It’s such a powerful and disturbing documentary. You’re both very good at taking these horrific stories and focusing on the survivors. That focus can be rare in true crime. How do you stay focused on the survivors rather than get distracted by the larger story?

Peck: Personally, I come from a vérité documentary background. I learned filmmaking from my mentor Barbara Kopple. Her approach is always to follow the characters from start to finish. To find people who have an intense experience with a story and document how that story unfolds. On this project we combined India’s personal story and the stories of the other former members of NXIVM with interviews with experts and with archival footage. But I think we’ve always approached stories that way. What is the experience that the person went through? And education and advocacy, for me, are always an important part of the process. One of the reasons that people will speak about traumatic subjects is because they believe that others can learn from their experience. They want to turn that trauma into activism.

Lessner: We started research with a couple of former members. We started before there was a whole lot of other research material out there and before the trial started. We listened and learned from them and spoke to a lot of other former members who did not agree to come on camera. We were respectful of everybody’s boundaries.

We realized early on that, as sensitive as we can be, we’re not professional counselors. So we have set up a fund with F.A.C.T., Families Against Cult Teachings, which is a caregiving organization that supports victims of cults. Through that fund we were able to provide therapy services and professional counseling to women who chose to share their stories, before, during, and after filming.

To be honest, it’s not easy to work on material like this, day in and day out, for almost two years. We actually found out in the process that our team, in editing, would go in the hallway and you’d hear somebody screaming at their monitor. Like, “Why can’t people say something?” Just shocked by the audacity of the NXIVM curriculum and why people were not able to object and stand up. I think it was really triggering and troubling to some of the people who worked with us on the team. We offered the same counseling services to them. … We had to support the people in front and behind the camera when we tell these stories because they’re just difficult.

If you’re emotionally exhausted by the end of the day, then you probably don’t want to dive further into a horrific story of abuse. Providing these services, I’m sure, helps your people so much.

Peck: We really entered this world for over a year and a half, day and night, seven days a week. We went from going on a personal journey with this one young woman who was signed up for what she thought was an Executive Success Program that would teach her business and communication skills — and she got to a point where she thought that she would die for Keith Raniere. So what we really wanted to look at was how does coercive control and indoctrination work? How do intelligent young women get targeted and recruited? What is the process of transforming their thoughts to the point where they could become a branded sex slave to this mastermind predator and cult leader?

I wanted to talk about your relationship with India because she’s so vulnerable throughout the entire series. You actually see her therapy sessions. Did she immediately offer all of this access to you? How did your relationship with India work?

Peck: We met her at a point where she was still questioning “What happened to my brain?” The first time we spoke to her we asked her how she was doing, and she said, “Well, I’m still trying to figure out the difference between what I thought happened and what actually happened.” But her story had been taken out of her hands. It had been told not only by her mother, but she had been slashed across the media as a sex slave, as a cult girl. She wanted to take ownership of her story, and she decided to let us accompany her on this journey of trying to figure out what happened to her brain. That was our starting point.

Lessner: I think she trusted Cecilia’s body of work. Our previous film together, Brave Miss World, focused on survivors of sexual assault. Cecilia has done Shut Up and Sing. I think being able to evaluate that body of work and have a conversation with us, she was able to trust us, that our intentions were aligned with her own. She actually joined us when we were already starting to edit, kind of halfway through production… It definitely transformed the focus of the piece.

She said, “I’m not going to hold anything back. I am an open book. You can ask me anything you want.” We obviously were very careful not to re-trigger any trauma, and make sure she had the professional support she needs and offer her our support. But it was really her mission to go and confront, and really understand, investigate, “How did this happen to my brain?” And take us along on that journey.

Peck: I would say it was a combination of her trust in us and her understanding that she wanted it to really resonate and help other people. … When she first joined, she thought it would be for one interview. It turned out that STARZ very much understood that she would be a good amplifier for the voices of all the women in the series and that we did need one central character to focus on that could take the audience through the story. We just kept going when she joined us.

Lessner: Actually, our first shoot with her was in Serbia. We went to Belgrade and we met the rest of the family. That helped build trust and familiarity. We were welcomed into the royal family. It kind of felt like it was meant to be.

The result feels deeply intimate. Her openness makes everything Keith Raniere did so much more horrifying.

Peck: There was so much that needed to be investigated. Why would you say yes to a readiness drill? What was that cult trying to accomplish? Why would you send a naked picture? We weren’t satisfied with just saying [India] did those things. We really wanted to go deep into why. What’s the process? How do you get there? How do you silence your own instincts that are crying out, saying, “This is not a good idea”? Each episode of our show is about a different part of her journey that takes you through how she got involved and deep into the indoctrination process.

What I really love about the format of Seduced is that typically India will tell a story about her time in NXIVM, and then you will cut to cult experts who basically confirm that these leaders were using manipulative strategies on her. How did you find these experts?

Peck: Through research. We sought out all of the foremost experts in the field. We were so grateful to them, from Dr. Janja Lalich to Steven Hassan to Rick Ross to Rachel Bernstein. These are the leading authorities on these issues. Also, STARZ really encouraged and pushed us to make sure that every time India experienced something or any of the other women in the show, that we provide content from an expert in the field so the audience could understand how to process these very complicated, intricate things.

Lessner: On one hand, it helps the viewer to see the nefarious dynamic very clearly. On the other hand, it does present a much heavier burden to our characters. Because they have to still convey what it was like for them, not noticing the red flags, not knowing what is common cult tactics or that they were specifically targeted or that their thinking was tampered with and reformed. That’s why it had to be tremendously personal, so that you really believe their point of view and follow their throughline.

I know it helped me. To use India as an example, she went through this for years. Her whole life revolved around this organization. Whereas, as a viewer, this story has been condensed down to four hours. The context helped tremendously.

Peck: What’s so diabolical is this EM exercise that they used — it really makes people feel like they’ve had a tremendous breakthrough and signs people up for the next course. That’s what they employed when anybody had an objection or when something didn’t feel right. They would immediately order them to the EM to separate them from their own thoughts or instincts. The same technique that they used to lure them in was then later used to silence any questioning or any instinct that just wasn’t right.

There’s one interview in the final episode that really surprised me, and it’s with Keith Raniere’s defense counsel. How did that come about? Did you reach out to anyone else besides his defense attorney?

Peck: Early on, yes, we tried to reach out to others who still were loyal (to NXIVM). We made initial efforts to see if Clare Bronfman would maybe want to come on camera, but she wasn’t allowed to. None of the other descendants were permitted to talk about NXIVM. But it definitely wasn’t a focus.

Our focus was really on the women, on the former members, on our own investigative approach to telling their truth. We spoke to Mark Agnifilo, the defense lawyer, as well as to the prosecutor, Moira Penza. We did think it was important to take a look at what the argument that was being presented was. The idea that this was consensual — which the judge obviously saw through — there was a mountain of evidence about how these women were starved, sleep-deprived, blackmailed through the use of the collateral. It wasn’t an argument that held up, but I think we needed to make sense of at least what the argument was.

Lessner: That [prosecution] wasn’t a slam dunk. It took massive amounts of work and effort to build the case to convict him. It was two young female government attorneys against a battery of very highly-skilled and private lawyers, all paid for by the Clare Bronfman defense fund. You’ve been there. Even hearing all the atrocities, you still wonder, “Is he going to get away with it?” We’ve seen people get away with terrible things because of sophisticated lawyers. We wanted to convey that.

Peck: Our documentary is not neutral. We weren’t interested in showing both sides. We were interested in coercive control. How does it work? How does it manifest? What does it look like? It’s a film about the women who were victims of NXIVM. It’s not supposed to be a balanced look any more than I would want to make a film giving Harvey Weinstein an equal point of view to that of his victims.

Absolutely. The subject matter almost dictates not having a balanced point of view, because it’s very difficult to even begin to defend the other side.

Peck: We wanted to treat victims of trauma very carefully — not trigger them, not exploit them, not coerce them. Just give them a safe space to tell their stories.

Speaking about the framing of your film, when did you learn that HBO was going to release its own NXIVM documentary, The Vow? Did that influence how you structured Seduced?

Lessner: We had already started working and developing our idea when we learned — and had already started working with STARZ on filming it — when we realized that HBO was going to release it as a multi-part series. It was really when the trial started in Brooklyn, both our crew and their crew were in the courtroom together. We knew they had access to the story much earlier. And, to be honest, it was easy to see that they were better-funded and had more resources. But we just stuck to our own lane.

We were trying to do our thing, tell the stories of the women who trusted us. We didn’t really know what they were going to include or not. Had really zero idea, because that’s the nature of television. Everybody’s bound by confidentiality agreements. We locked the show at the end of July, and they announced that they’d start airing at the end of August. We, at this point, have been studying this, living with NXIVM for years. So you bet I watched every single episode of The Vow, but it was already after we locked the show.

Our show is in no way a response to The Vow… We learned about what’s happening in their episodes as it came out in the press and on TV like everybody else. We had no idea that they were saving the trial for a second season.

Did you see anything on The Vow that shocked you? 

Peck: They had incredible footage. We were fascinated with every scene in the series. We have a lot of respect for Mark Vicente and Sarah Edmondson and Bonnie Piesse and their roles in exposing NXIVM. Bonnie is the hero of the story. She recognized those red flags before anyone, and then she worked with Mark and Sarah to try and warn other members. They joined forces with Catherine [Oxenberg], who had been conducting her own investigation. Frank Parlato helped. They all went to the New York Times together; that was really a big turning point in bringing the cult down.

We’ve always felt that the two series are complementary: They’re different sides of the same story. It took everybody involved to expose NXIVM and bring them down. India happened to be ready to tell her story at a time that coincided with exactly where we were in our project. I think she felt very comfortable with our all-women team, all-women crews, and the environment we created on our sets. We had nothing but admiration for our fellow filmmakers, for their storytelling. Maybe we thought our two series would be more similar than they are. We’re kind of relieved to see that the approaches were quite different, and we’re offering different lenses to the story on both of the shows.

Lessner: If anything, it surprised us how different their approaches were. They really are. There were 17,000 members in NXIVM, so there are 17,000 stories.

Peck: It’s an ongoing trauma to have to deal with having been associated with that. Like Naomi [Gibson] says in our series, “If you weren’t branded physically,” she says, “our brains were branded.”

Collateral Damage was actually a title you liked, Inbal, at one point. I’ve seen people call our title, Seduced, salacious. But for us, NXIVM was a seduction from start to finish. From the moment you walked into the beautiful rooms, mingling with celebrities, info presentations, you were seduced. Our title comes more from the original meaning of the word, which is to lead one away from oneself.

I was shocked by the fourth episode and how it did a marvelous job showing the media’s influence on this case. All of these members, even if they only took one class, they were being accused of being in a sex cult. Was it always your intention to include that focus, the aftermath?

Lessner: Not only that, but having to reckon with the fact that you admired a man who was a psychopath predator, master manipulator, now convicted to 120 years in prison. Or maybe recruited other friends that maybe went further than you. All these were really interesting questions and points of trauma.

Peck: Also, it wasn’t just including what it felt like or including how it felt to be perceived in the media as being part of this. All of the women who came forward, it wasn’t an easy decision. They were very worried about what their families would think, about what it would mean to be publicly portrayed forever now as having been in NXIVM, of what it would do to their careers, even retaliation from people who were still loyal. None of that was easy.

That was always our intention, to highlight people’s courage in the face of all of the fears of what it means to come forward. But that’s what really moved us and made us want to make sure to honor their stories. It’s not easy to talk about this stuff. For all the women in the film, it was done because they knew it would help others. It would help another girl be able to recognize the red flags or say no if they got into a self-help group that felt very compelling but all of a sudden they’re asking you to do things you don’t really feel like doing. Maybe their stories would be that red flag.

But the end of our series, the fourth episode, is really what it’s all about for us. These women, speaking up and using their voices. Turning their trauma into activism.

The final moments of that episode are just so empowering. I teared up a lot during the scene when the NXIVM and DOS survivors are teaching classes to different law students.

Lessner: And you know, they spearheaded a website: SeducedDocumentary.com.

Peck: It’s an amazing resource they built for anybody who fears that they might be in a cult or trying to get out. It has resources and a story platform and a questionnaire for how do you recognize you’re in a cult. It’s entirely built, coded, and created by two of the former members of NXIVM who are in our series.

That’s incredible. What have you seen from fan reactions so far?

Peck: Inbal, do you want to talk about Twitter?

Lessner: It’s hard, because people want to put the two shows in comparison and at-war with each other. I think it is a distraction from the real issue of honestly talking about manipulation and coercive control. How did we, as a society, let this go on for 20 years? Why did women have to be branded on their vaginas to make it stop?

People reported about Keith’s sexual history with underage girls. There was enough there for people to really put a stop to it. So why don’t we have mechanisms in place, or laws in the United States, to stop groups like this before they become so dangerous? I think there’s enough evidence there that he was — at least, our experts think that he was — taking this group in a very dangerous situation that could have ended like Jonestown. People were willing to sacrifice themselves for him. If you follow the loyalists, they are sacrificing their lives, their reputations, their future careers on defending him publicly.

I love that they’re getting the message. They’re seeing the parallels to abusive relationships in their lives, to abuse in the workplace, to our political spectrum. People are really drawing existing parallels. You don’t really have to be in a crazy sex cult to recognize those red flags, to recognize when there’s coercion and manipulation. I just hope people will continue to see the series with its merits and take away from it beyond, “Who’s the winner in this docuseries battle?”

Peck: At the same time, the incredible positive response has been, “I understand how that happened to India and these other women.” People seem to be able to grasp — through the way we break down the gradual process from recruitment to indoctrination — that it could happen to almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances and given the incredibly skilled recruitment and marketing practices of NXIVM. They knew exactly what words to use. They would offer mentorship in your chosen field, the best women’s group you’ve ever been part of, help in starting a business. They knew what to say to everyone to get them into the first class and then to make them believe they needed the next class. That’s part of what we’re hearing back, is that people realize that it doesn’t mean you’re vulnerable or weak or uneducated. It could happen to almost anyone.

It feels crass to even ask about a Season 2 of a true crime documentary, but do you see yourselves continuing this story in any way? Or collaborating on another project in the future?

Peck: It’s interesting. When you become very educated into a subject like we have, you want to continue to make a difference and employ everything you’ve learned. We’re not saying we wouldn’t do another show or season or series around issues of coercive control and manipulation. We are taking a tiny bit of a breather. It was an incredibly intense, 24/7 experience. We both have a couple of other projects that we’re working on. But I love working with Inbal. I think she’s the greatest storytelling editor working in documentary. We definitely want to collaborate again.

Lessner: Thank you. Yeah, the right project will have to present itself or have to be sought out and developed, probably that’s more likely. It will come from the trove of this work that we have done together, and hopefully we continue to do together, of giving voice to people who want to make a difference.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Watch Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult on STARZ