‘One Piece’ Star Joe Manganiello (49) Accuses Sofia Vergara (54) of Mocking Him at His Lowest Point in Explosive New Memoir

Celebrity memoirs tend to arrive with a few carefully chosen headlines, but few start this much conversation before they even reach shelves. Joe Manganiello’s ‘Bloodlines’ is a book about survival, family history, and a health crisis he kept private for years. Early excerpts are already pulling attention away from the medical story and toward his marriage.

The actor, 49, spent seven years dealing with what the book describes as a cascade of autoimmune-related illnesses. They affected his thyroid, digestive system, skin, lungs, and eyes, and doctors struggled to give him clear answers. He lost 60 lbs, and emergency surgery in 2016 removed part of his intestines and left him relying on an ostomy bag.

That brings us to the passage now circulating widely online. In an excerpt obtained by People, Manganiello alleges that his then-wife, Sofia Vergara, ridiculed him over the 5-lb chihuahua he adopted in 2019. He says he took the dog in while he was contemplating suicide.

Manganiello writes that the dog changed his role in the house, turning him from the patient into the caretaker. For him, Bubbles was a source of purpose at a moment when he badly needed one.

He also claims Vergara refused to hug him even when he begged, and describes the marriage as emotionally empty during the worst of his illness. These are his recollections, and Vergara had not publicly answered them in the coverage reviewed here.

The memoir also takes on the public story of why the couple split. Vergara told the Spanish newspaper El País that the marriage ended because her husband was younger and wanted children, while she did not want to be an older mom. Manganiello has pushed back on that account before, calling those reports untrue in a July 2024 interview with Men’s Journal.

In ‘Bloodlines’, he says he stopped wanting a child because of his illness. He also writes that false things were said and printed about him, and he presents the book as his chance to correct the record.

The two announced their split in July 2023 after 7 years of marriage. Manganiello filed for divorce on July 19, 2023, and it was reportedly finalized in February 2024.

Reducing ‘Bloodlines’ to a Vergara story would miss most of what the publisher says the book is about. Manganiello describes it as his untold story of survival, tracing a search for answers that took him around the globe and back through time. When conventional medicine ran out of explanations, he turned to shamans, pagan rituals, ancient myths and long-lost family records.

That search also leads him to his Armenian ancestry, including his great-grandmother Terviz Darakjian, a survivor of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. The memoir treats illness, masculinity, faith and inherited trauma as threads of the same story. He previously told People the period was the most brutally difficult time of his life, but also his greatest adventure.

Manganiello says he is now symptom-free, which gives the memoir a hopeful frame despite its darker passages. He has also moved on personally. He announced his engagement to Caitlin O’Connor in October 2025, and the announcement photo featured the couple with Bubbles.

That detail adds a quiet kind of closure to the story. The same chihuahua he credits with pulling him through his lowest point now appears in the happier chapter of his life.

‘Bloodlines’ arrives October 13, and the full text will show how much of the Vergara material is a central thread and how much is a smaller part of a much larger story. Readers will also get a fuller picture of the illness itself, which is the heart of the book. Whether Vergara responds publicly is the open question hanging over the rollout.

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