Joe Manganiello has accused ex-wife Sofía Vergara of ridiculing him during a years-long health crisis that he says brought him to the brink of suicide.
The “True Blood” star, 49, makes the claims in his upcoming memoir “Bloodlines,” excerpts of which were. Manganiello writes that Vergara, 54, mocked him over Bubbles, the five-pound dog he adopted in 2019 at what he describes as the lowest point of his illness. “I had to give my gun away because I kept thinking about it, and then the dog came,” he told the magazine. “I went from being the patient to the caretaker.”
Manganiello also alleges that the “Modern Family” alum refused physical comfort even when he begged for it. According to the memoir excerpts, Vergara would not hug him during severe periods of his sickness. The actor further contends that he abandoned his desire for children because of his condition, directly contradicting Vergara’s public explanation for their 2023 divorce.
The health battle began shortly after the couple’s 2015 wedding, Manganiello said. His initial symptoms included abdominal pain so excruciating he could not walk, plus blistering rashes, headaches, fatigue and rectal bleeding. “I was getting sicker and sicker,” he recalled.
Over seven years, Manganiello said he shed 60 pounds, endured multiple colonoscopies, and underwent emergency surgery in 2016 to remove part of his intestines. The procedure left him dependent on an ostomy bag. “It happened to me, and it’s the truth, and I have all the scars to prove it,” he told the outlet.
Conventional medicine repeatedly failed him, Manganiello said, until he visited a Santa Monica shaman who attributed his ailments to generational trauma. That history included ancestors lost to the Armenian genocide and his grandmother’s struggle with lupus. After a follow-up surgery reconnected his digestive tract, he said he became symptom-free and stopped taking medication.
The memoir also serves as a rebuttal to press coverage he calls inaccurate. “There were things said and printed about me that were false,” Manganiello said. He specifically targets Vergara’s 2024 statements that their split stemmed from his wish to start a family. “My marriage broke up because my husband was younger; he wanted to have kids, and I didn’t want to be an old mom,” Vergara said at the time. “I feel it’s not fair to the baby.” The actress, who shares son Manolo Gonzalez Vergara, 34, with first husband Joe Gonzalez, added that having children was “not for [her] anymore.”
Manganiello’s account offers a different timeline. After failed IVF attempts, he said the couple explored egg donors. But his deteriorating health shifted his priorities. He said he did not want to die and leave Vergara with a child “who wasn’t biologically hers.”
The actor is now engaged to Caitlin O’Connor, and the couple are weighing parenthood. “If that’s meant for me,” he shared. “For seven years I thought I was going to be dead the next week. The world has opened back up to me.”
Vergara has not publicly responded to the memoir’s allegations. Reports said reaching out to her representative for comment.
The former couple’s seven-year marriage ended in 2023 amid conflicting narratives about its collapse. While Vergara pointed to their age gap and divergent family plans, Manganiello’s memoir frames his health ordeal as the central untold story—and suggests Vergara’s behavior during that period compounded his suffering.
Manganiello’s memoir “Bloodlines” is scheduled for release through a publisher not named in the excerpts.
