Joe Manganiello disputes Sofia Vergara’s account of why they split at length

Joe Manganiello is disputing Sofia Vergara’s version of why their marriage ended, and his new memoir, Bloodlines, out October 13, goes deeper into his side of the story.

A year after their divorce, Vergara told El País in January 2024 that they split because he wanted children and she did not. “I didn’t want to be an old mom,” she said. 

Manganiello pushed back in a July 2024 Men’s Journal article. “There’s been a lot said in the press about me wanting a family. That’s simply not true,” he said. “We did try to have a family for the first year and a half.”

In the memoir, he says his illness led him to give up on starting a family after failed IVF attempts. He says they considered egg donors, but he “didn’t want to die and leave Vergara with a child who wasn’t biologically hers.”

Manganiello, 49, says his health began to decline soon after his 2015 wedding to Vergara, 54. He has described a painful autoimmune disease that he says left him suicidal. He writes that medication usually used for Crohn’s disease and colitis did not work, so he turned to hydrocodone, fentanyl patches and marijuana despite 13 years of sobriety.

He claims the marriage became “devoid of any emotionality whatsoever” and also alleges Vergara “refused to hug him even when he begged.” He claims she ridiculed him over his chihuahua, Bubbles, whom he adopted in 2019.

Another excerpt says Vergara was at his bedside during a 2016 emergency surgery and authorised doctors to remove part of his intestines. He calls it a “life-saving organ amputation.” 

Manganiello says he is now off medication and pain-free after a second surgery.

Manganiello is also now engaged to actress Caitlin O’Connor, 37, and says he is open to starting a family with her. “The world has opened back up to me,” he said.

The original article includes no response from Vergara to the memoir claims.