What to Know
Three years after Joe Manganiello and Sofia Vergara‘s divorce, the actor is telling his side of the story. While promoting his upcoming memoir, Bloodlines, Joe made some pretty harsh allegations against his ex-wife in an interview with People, detailing cruel ways he claims she treated him while he was facing serious health issues.
Things got so bad at one point that he described their marriage as “devoid of any emotionality whatsoever.” Yikes.
Joe said he spent seven years battling an autoimmune condition.
Much of Manganiello’s upcoming memoir focuses on his seven-year battle fighting an autoimmune condition that left him so sick that he said he always felt like he “was going to be dead the next week.”
His health crisis began in the months after his 2015 wedding to Sofia, and though he never received a name for his diagnosis, he spent those years being put through the medical wringer, including a surgery that removed part of his intestines and caused him to need an ostomy bag.
“It happened to me, and it’s the truth, and I have all the scars to prove it,” he told People. “[Autoimmune] conditions are a dumping ground for things [doctors] don’t understand. They start running you through this gauntlet of drugs.”
This is when he said that his marriage had “become devoid of any emotionality whatsoever,” and it sounds like the sicker he got, the worse the situation at home became.
He claimed Sofia wasn’t very sympathetic to his struggle.
The outlet reported that, in Joe’s book, he wrote that Sofia refused to hug him, even when he begged for it, and she wasn’t happy when he adopted a chihuahua named Bubbles who he nursed back to health in 2019.
Still, he credits adopting Bubble with saving his life.
“I had to give my gun away because I kept thinking about it, and then the dog came. I went from being the patient to the caretaker,” he said.
Joe also seemed to insinuate that his ex-wife lied about the reason their marriage ended.
After his divorce from Sofia, she claimed that they’d broken up because Joe, who is younger, wanted to have children and Sofia felt that time had already passed her by. But according to what he told People, that story was “false.”
In reality, Joe said the couple had been undergoing IVF in the hopes of conceiving, but he decided against proceeding when he got sick. Since they were using an egg donor, he was worried about dying and leaving Sofia with a baby “who wasn’t biologically hers.”
Now, things look very different for him. Not only is he healthy these days, but he’s also engaged to Caitlin O’Connor, and finally has hope for the future.
“For seven years I thought I was going to be dead the next week. The world has opened back up to me,” he said.
Joe’s memoir, Bloodlines, is out on October 13.
