Joe Manganiello Bloodlines Memoir: In His Own Words, the Secret Illness That Nearly Killed Him
No stylist, no set, no handlers — just Joe in a gray hoodie, talking straight to the camera about the decade he hid from everyone.
By The Insider — CelebnMusic247
Before the book tour, the interviews and the headlines, there was just this: Joe Manganiello, hair pulled up, sitting in front of a plain wall and talking straight into his phone like the camera was a confessional. He captioned the video with his own announcement: “A few words about my memoir BLOODLINES, now available for pre-order on Amazon.com, and wherever else books are sold. In stores October 13th…”
The video was posted in June, when the book was still a pre-order. October 13 has come and gone, and Bloodlines: A Memoir (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 320 pages) is now in stores in hardcover, Kindle and audiobook — which makes the clip above worth watching again. It is the moment he said the quiet part out loud, in his own words, before anyone else could frame it for him.
Here is what he says in it. The book took him three years to write, and the reason is the confession at its center: for the past decade, Manganiello had been battling a deadly mystery illness that doctors could not diagnose. Powerful biologic drugs were thrown at it, and the treatments themselves plagued him with severe side effects for years. He wrote the book, he explains, in the hope that someone out there suffering the way he suffered might finally connect dots that he could not see at the start of his own struggle.
The fuller picture, filled in by People and publisher Simon & Schuster around the release, is staggering. The illness consumed seven of the last ten years of his life — an autoimmune illness he says doctors never conclusively diagnosed. He was treated for Crohn’s disease and colitis; nothing worked. The symptoms were brutal: excruciating abdominal pain that left him unable to walk, an ulcerating digestive tract, fevers, blistering rashes, headaches and fatigue. In 2016 came emergency surgery that removed his large intestine — what he calls a “major organ amputation” — and in the two weeks after the operation he lost 60 pounds, living for a time with an ostomy bag before a later surgery reconnected his digestive tract.
Today, he says, he is symptom-free and off medication. “I can’t believe I’m alive,” he told People. “I feel like I was reborn.”
The memoir does not stop at the hospital doors. It digs into his family history and Armenian roots, and yes, it revisits his marriage to Sofía Vergara, which unraveled as the illness took over his life. Manganiello has insisted he tells the truth in the book even when it is painful — and that the marriage is not the point of it. The point, as the video makes plain, is the hiding. The man who played Alcide the werewolf and Big Dick Richie spent a decade built like a superhero and quietly falling apart.
He is making up for the silence in person: tonight, October 20, he brings the book home to Pittsburgh for a ticketed event at the First Unitarian Church, presented by White Whale Bookstore and moderated by Dan Cortese — with a signed hardcover included in every ticket, per his announcement on Instagram.
Bloodlines is available now, wherever books are sold. Watch the video above first. It hits different now that you know how the story ends.
Related: Joe Manganiello’s dragon tattoo — and the surgery scars it covers
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Sources: Instagram | People | Page Six | Simon & Schuster
