‘The Kill Room’ Star Joe Manganiello’s (49) Memoir Reveals a Shaman’s Voodoo Curse Claim Involving Sofía Vergara’s (54) Ex

Celebrity memoirs usually promise a few juicy anecdotes, but Joe Manganiello’s ‘Bloodlines’ was always going to be something different. The memoir, released on Oct. 13, chronicles a long-secret health ordeal that pushed the ‘True Blood’ and ‘Magic Mike’ star far beyond conventional medicine.

According to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, Manganiello fought autoimmune-related illnesses for 7 years, with symptoms that hit his skin, thyroid, eyes, lungs and digestive system. The battle included chronic pain and a life-saving organ amputation. As doctors struggled for answers, he turned to shamans, pagan rituals, ancient myths and long-lost family records.

That unorthodox search has now produced the memoir’s most talked-about moment: a shaman’s claim that someone from Sofía Vergara’s past put a voodoo curse on him. Manganiello writes that a Cuba-based shaman, speaking with him over the phone, described his illness, including his intestinal problems. The shaman then said a man from his wife’s past was still in love with her and had cursed her husband in New Orleans.

Manganiello says he was stunned, since even some close relatives didn’t know those details. He glanced at Vergara with a mix of fear, anger and disbelief, then ran through her exes in his head. He landed on the man she was with right before him, an apparent reference to her ex-fiancé.

The story doesn’t stop there. Manganiello also writes that he wondered whether Vergara herself was the one who had been cursed, by a man from her past who couldn’t have her. In that theory, the hex was meant to pass to any man she got together with for the rest of her life.

He acknowledges that these thoughts sounded unbelievable. Still, he couldn’t work out how a stranger on the phone knew so much about his condition. Reports say he even considered flying to Ecuador after the call.

It’s one of several unconventional episodes in the book. Manganiello also describes a ritual in Cuba involving a goat’s skull, and a shaman in Santa Monica who suggested that generational trauma was feeding his suffering.

The curse story sits alongside some pointed claims about his marriage to Vergara. Manganiello says his symptoms began shortly after the couple wed in November 2015. He alleges that she refused to hug him when he asked, and that she ridiculed his Chihuahua, Bubbles, whom he adopted in 2019 during one of his lowest points.

He describes the marriage as having become emotionally empty. At the same time, he acknowledges that Vergara was present during a serious 2016 medical emergency and authorized the operation that cost him part of his intestines.

The memoir also revisits why the couple split. They announced their separation in July 2023, and the divorce was finalized in 2024. Vergara told Spanish newspaper El País in January 2024 that the marriage ended because he wanted children and she didn’t want to be an older mother.

Manganiello disputed that version in a July 2024 interview with Men’s Journal, and he does so again in ‘Bloodlines’. He says his illness led him to give up on fatherhood, and he writes that after failed IVF attempts and talk of egg donors, he feared dying and leaving Vergara to raise a child who wasn’t biologically hers.

These are Manganiello’s recollections, and the voodoo claim comes from a shaman, not from any medical or factual finding. He never received a conclusive diagnosis, and nothing in his account establishes that a ritual or shamanic treatment cured him. When excerpts first surfaced, Vergara hadn’t responded publicly, though later coverage suggests she has appeared to reply without naming her ex-husband directly.

Manganiello says he is now symptom-free and off medication. He is also engaged to actress Caitlin O’Connor, with the pair getting engaged in the summer of 2025. He has framed writing the book as a way to set the record straight about things said about him that he says were false.

The memoir is also about much more than celebrity drama. It traces his ancestry back to his great-grandmother Terviz Darakjian, a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, and explores how inherited trauma may have shaped his struggles.

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