Exclusive: Joe Manganiello Gets Candid About Divorce

Joe Manganiello gets honest about his divorce from Sofia Vergara in a new Men’s Journal cover story, contending that the media narrative that developed around their split was "simply not true."

Manganiello married Modern Family star Sofia Vergara in 2015 after meeting her at the previous year’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner. They announced their split in July 2023. In January, Vergara gave an interview to Spanish publication El País in which she spoke about their marriage’s dissolution.

“I’m newly divorced from my second husband, who I was with for 10 years,” she told El País in January 2024. “My marriage broke up because my husband was younger; he wanted to have kids and I didn’t want to be an old mom.”

“There's been a lot said in the press about me wanting a family,” Manganiello began.

“That’s simply not true,” he said of the El País story. “We did try to have a family for the first year and a half. And we had a huge conversation right out of the gate during the first month we dated,” the Magic Mike star revealed.

"I said, ‘If you're done with kids, then I understand. Just tell me, and I'll know what this is, and that's okay,'" he recalled telling her. "But that wasn't the case with her. And I swore to her that I would never leave if it didn't work out. And I didn't.”

Manganiello continued: “To be painted as if I had some sort of midlife crisis, and after nine years, turned to somebody and gave them an ultimatum of, ‘Do this potentially unhealthy thing to your body, or else I'm gone’? That’s never who I was.”

Manganiello explained that the discussion over children “wasn't inevitably why everything ended. It's because two people grew apart, and sometimes that happens.”

As he approaches 50, the 47-year-old actor is looking forward to his fresh start and its many new opportunities. Manganiello says he’s eating the “third bite of the apple,” seeing this as “a third phase to my career and life.”

In a sign of things to come, Manganiello recently blew past his previous strength record. “I didn’t expect to do that,” he admitted. “I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m 47. I can do anything better than ever.’”

You can check out Manganiello's full Men's Journal cover story here.