Joe Manganiello is sharing what he says is the real reason for his divorce with Sofía Vergara.
The former couple called it quits last summer after seven years. While Vergara said in an interview this year that their marriage ended because Manganiello “wanted to have kids” and she didn’t, the “Magic Mike” star said Tuesday that that’s “simply not true.”
“There’s been a lot said in the press about me wanting a family,” Manganiello told Men’s Journal in an interview published Tuesday. “That’s simply not true. 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.”
“I said, ‘If you’re done with kids, then I understand. Just tell me, and I’ll know what this is, and that’s OK,’” the 47-year-old continued. “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.”
Vergara, meanwhile, explicitly told El País in January that kids were a dealbreaker.
The “Modern Family” star explained at the time that her marriage ended because Manganiello “was younger” and she “didn’t want to be an old mom.” The 52-year-old, who had her first and only child in 1991, said she was “ready to be a grandmother, not a mother.”
Manganiello admitted to wanting children Tuesday, but said this “wasn’t inevitably why everything ended” and that he and his ex-wife simply “grew apart.”
The actor, who first started dating Vergara in 2014, said it’s been hard to watch certain narratives flourish.
“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’?” Manganiello told Men’s Journal. “That’s never who I was.”
Chris Pizzello/Invision/Associated Press
The former couple has forged ahead, however. Manganiello, who told Men’s Journal he’s breaking personal records in the gym and is the “biggest I’d ever been,” is dating model Caitlin O’Connor and executive-producing the upcoming season of “Deal or No Deal Island.”
Vergara found a new partner herself, meanwhile, and is reportedly dating orthopedic surgeon Justin Saliman. The “Griselda” star confessed in November that she’s had a “very difficult year,” but said that she was looking forward to 2024.
“I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a fresh start at 51,” Vergara told People at the time. “I don’t know if I’m fresh anymore, but I’m just excited.”