Joe Manganiello wrote a memoir to explain his divorce — readers are apologising to Sofía Vergara instead
A goat's skull in Cuba, a phone call about a voodoo curse and a two-day cleansing offer in Ecuador. So far, Vergara's only reply is a clapping emoji.
Joe Manganiello's memoir Bloodlines came out on 13 October 2026, and on its second day in shops the detail doing the rounds is not the illness it was written about. According to Entertainment Weekly, a second shaman in the book, one recommended to Manganiello by Armie Hammer, told him he was never meant to marry Sofía Vergara. That is a grown man taking marriage advice from a healer sourced through Armie Hammer, and then putting it in print.
The book's official subject is a seven-year autoimmune illness that started shortly after the couple's November 2015 wedding and ended with life-saving surgery. The marriage, which ended in a 2024 divorce, is framed as collateral damage, and he told People the split is "not the point of the book". Readers have decided otherwise.
Three shamans, a goat's skull and a curse from New Orleans
The healing chapters are where the book gets away from its author, and the itinerary goes like this:
- Cuba, round one: a medicine man has him lick a pituitary gland inside a goat's skull. It doesn't work.
- Cuba, round two: a shaman phones to say one of Vergara's exes, still in love with her, put a voodoo curse on him in New Orleans, then offers a two-day cleansing in Ecuador.
- Santa Monica: another shaman points at generational trauma.
- The Hammer referral: the one who reportedly told him the wedding itself was the mistake.
Two of the four explanations route straight through Vergara: her ex's curse, and a marriage that apparently should never have happened. Her fault by proximity, twice.
The case against Vergara, as filed by Manganiello
The direct charges are smaller than the shamans. He writes that the marriage became "devoid of any emotionality whatsoever", that she refused to hug him even when he begged, and that she ridiculed Bubbles, a five-pound chihuahua he adopted in 2019 while suicidal. He also disputes her 2024 account of the split, "he wanted to have kids and I didn't want to be an old mom", saying he gave up on children after failed IVF.
Read more: Sofía Vergara blamed their divorce on Joe Manganiello wanting kids — his memoir says he refused
On paper, that is a sympathetic story. In practice, the r/Fauxmoi thread on the curse reads like a group apology to the other side:
"My bad for side eyeing Sofia for a min. I'm sorry."
— a top comment on r/Fauxmoi, 1,395 upvotes
Another, with 888 upvotes, got to the strategy question: "This is the man she was dealing with? And she's been quiet this whole time? I guess it was the right strategy." Fair enough. A divorce memoir only works if the reader stays on your side until the last page, and somewhere around the phone call from Cuba, a lot of them got off.
Vergara's entire response is a clapping emoji
Vergara has not commented on Bloodlines. The closest she has come is resharing her son Manolo's Instagram Story comparing a "good man" with a "narcissistic man", the latter apparently inclined to "gaslight", "blameshift" and "play the victim", with a clapping emoji and no caption.
Manganiello answered on CBS Mornings on 12 October, the day before release: "Anybody who said that should read the book first." People are reading it. That is rather the problem.
The book was meant to be his side of the divorce. It has made her silence the strongest argument in it.
Next comes the promotional tour: more interviews, more excerpts, more shamans. Vergara, star of Modern Family and Griselda, doesn't need a rebuttal, an interview or a ghostwriter. She can keep doing exactly what she is doing. Which is nothing, very effectively.
Read more: The Big Bang Theory stars were praised for a pay cut that Chuck Lorre remembers differently