Joe Manganiello on his new memoir, "Bloodlines"

We always love having him here, but this time Joe Manganiello is sharing a much more personal side of himself. The actor we know from True Blood and Magic Mike has a new book out called Bloodlines, and it's about so much more than his Hollywood life. Joe opens up about a years-long health battle that nearly took his life, the search for answers when medicine couldn't explain everything and how that journey led him to discover some extraordinary things about his family's history. It is a story about survival, identity, faith, and what we carry with us sometimes without even knowing it. It's so nice to have you back with us. Nice to see you. And the first question, obviously, is how are you doing? How's your health right now? Great. Yeah, someone backstage was like, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, I slept great. Yeah, no, this story, I mean, the story documented in the book starts about 10 years ago. And it's It's about this 10 year battle in secret with this host of mystery illnesses. Come to find out my grandmother, half German, half Armenian baby born in a relocation camp in the wake of the Armenian genocide suffered almost all of the same conditions that I did. So as I was going from doctor to doctor and dermatologist to dermatologist and all of my conditions were being split into different parts and I'm being sent to different doctors who want to put me on different drugs to solve them all. The underlying condition I realized was passed down to me, created by this, by what we would consider generational trauma caused by the genocide. Talk about what you went through because this is really some scary stuff to the point where you're being pumped up, all this medications being pumped into your body. At the same time, you're trying to be very private about it because you're getting these opportunities that are big deal in your career, right? Major roles, right? At the same exact time. Yeah, but also, I'm just, I'm afraid. There are people who knew that I was sick, that I had to be removed from a set. And so, there are paparazzi all over my house. There are paparazzi trying to figure out what hospital I'm in, what room I'm in, trying to get the first pictures of me sick. So that drove me into a corner where I felt like I can't come out with this or I need to put out a story to say that my appendix was removed to try to get them off of me. My appendix was removed but along with lots of other stuff too. My whole large intestine was cut out early on and I lived with an ostomy bag for a period of time and was concerned that it might be permanent. And then that kind of kicked off this seven year up and down battle where every time I i wanted to come clean every time i wanted to live authentically something would happen and get in the way of that and i would feel like i couldn't do that in reading your book i actually in listening to your book because i did the audible you know it helps with the freeways here in LA driving I got through it it was nice because it felt like you were reading to me yeah um every time i was like oh okay it's gonna get better it would keep getting worse yeah you know my mother um I couldn't acknowledge that I was writing this book partially because her mother, my grandmother who passed away out of complications with autoimmune conditions, she was so traumatized by losing her mother early that it made it so that for the rest of her life, it was difficult to talk about. And then of course, her son heading into the same age she lost her mother, starts getting sick. It really pushed her into a place where she couldn't deal with it. And so I sent her the audio book and she started listening to it. And then she got to a place where she couldn't go any further. So I came to her house and sat with her and we got through the difficult parts and my mother said, does it ever get any better? Of course, like as if I wasn't sitting there in front of her. Like yeah, I'm right here. Spoiler. What really struck me though is that you're dealing with this in private. You just landed this major motion picture role where you're doing, you have to be the best shape of your life and do these- Well, he was the best shape. Right, and do these scenes. Well, when I get offered, I'm in the worst shape of my life. Right, exactly, and yet you're trying to train and get fitted for armor for this, and you're trying to hide your condition. And I think what's so relatable about that is that so many people kind of live like that, right? They try to put on an armor and face the responsibilities of their life, their work, their job, their family, and put on a strong face. Yet you're suffering inside and in private. Yeah, I mean, you're trying to strong for everybody around you. I mean, especially as a man, that's what you do. You don't make anybody else's life more difficult. You make people's lives simpler. You take care of people, you provide for. So when all of that starts being taken away and you start being stripped down, your identity goes into this, basically, this whirlpool. And so the book is a lot of me letting go of the things that I thought I was, it was this, was, it was this identity, this life that I had created and spent so much hard work creating for myself. And it's about what happens when you realize what you've inherited, like the life you created can't hold what you inherited and you have to give in and you have to allow this thing to happen. And I really feel like the book was my purpose of the first half of my life was to be here talking about this now. And especially, as you know, for a lot of people, the Armenian genocide didn't exist or wasn't taught until they either heard me talk about it on a show like this or read about it in the book. And I find lots of people that it's educational for them because growing up as an Armenian, I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what all of that meant because you're a kid and they're not gonna tell a little kid what happened. And so really, it's about a discovery process of who I am and what I'm carrying, and kind of like I feel like I'm a representative for my ancestors. Absolutely, when you did that episode of Finding My Roots, you know this, you've mentioned it also in your book, all of a sudden, you got such a big response. Did you feel like you found your community in a way? And how much it meant that someone like you was just saying the words Armenian genocide? Yeah, I had no idea. I was just, people would say, you're being political, no, I'm being personal. This is a personal story to me and I didn't know how much just merely telling my great grandmother's story was going to mean to Armenians. And people would say, I'm so happy you discovered your Armenian roots, it's like, no, no, no. My mother's more culturally Armenian than anything. The food she cooked for me growing, yeah, it's my great grandmother and my grandmother. But when I went, finally got to go to Armenia and saw the pomegranates, pomegranate juice on the sidewalk, and lama junes everywhere, and sojuk and eggs. I mean, I ate sojuk and eggs for breakfast, like every weekend that I was home from college. I would come home, my mother knew what I wanted to eat. So, you know, but- What a full circle moment for you to take that trip, I think, to Armenia, which obviously, at the end of the book, you make that full circle connection. But you took this trip to Armenia. You went with the organization Children of Armenia Fund, which both you and I, every December, we meet in New York. It's become our tradition. Talk a little bit about what that experience was like. There we see bubbles along with your fiancée, Caitlin O'Connor. Yeah, and they're making lavash. And then I visited all of the monasteries. And the framework for the book, you know, I didn't know where I was going to land the story or where it was going to end. But, you know, the book is split into three acts. in the first act, I named the flood because it felt like this illness started. It was like the rain was starting. And then this flood washed away what I thought my life was supposed to be. Now, by the end of act three, I wind up in Armenia in the shadow of Mount Ararat, which everybody knows is where we believe Noah's Ark landed and life started over. So it was about letting go of what I thought my life was supposed to be and accepting that this was my journey and then it's going to be okay. A lot of symbolism and so many levels here in this story of your personal story, but internally, externally, physically, what does healing mean to you? Because healing was not just physically for you, there's so many levels here you talk about your deep cultural past. Yeah, I really feel like I was handed a bar tab for a bunch of food and drinks that I did not order. And the people who ordered it, we're gone, and life wasn't gonna let me leave until somebody paid for it. And I really feel like in going through this journey and connecting these dots the way that I was able to in the book, I not only healed myself, but I feel like I healed my ancestors, that their lives weren't in vain, that I get to talk about them, say their names, talk about the struggles that they went through. And I feel like that there's this, I don't know, this calm that has happened. You have a very calm presence. Tell people how you healed, though, as far as you're healthy now. How did it just end? Well, I wound up talking to Dr. Gabor Maté, and Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-Jewish doctor whose family survived the Holocaust, the Jewish Holocaust. And there's a lot of Jewish people that suffer from the same conditions that these autoimmune conditions that I find that I suffer from, I meet a lot of Armenians that do, I meet a lot of Greeks that do. But it's not only specific to that area, I have friends of mine who are Vietnamese. And they talk about the trauma of their mother was pregnant, they're on a raft, they think the pirates are gonna take the baby away, this is not unique to any one culture. But I really feel like it was an unraveling, an untying of those knots that were passed down. The generations prior didn't talk. Yeah, that's true. And then you as a descendant get handed these things that they don't talk about. And when you do start talking, whether you're artists or black sheep in the family, like why don't you shut up and stop talking about us all, please, please, we have to. And I guess like the message here is like whether you're suffering with an ostomy bag, are suffering, you've been passed down some mystery illness, whatever it is, it's important to talk about that and not push that down and repress that because that's what makes you sicker. I do want to give Bubbles some acknowledgement here because people have seen Bubbles with you and it's been strange for people who don't know the significance of Bubbles and how Bubbles came into your life because you're this big guy and there's this little tiny dog. But Bubbles really helped you heal. And I think you needed Bubbles as much as Bubbles needed you. 100%. Yeah, Bubbles is the subject of chapter three in the book. She came to me at one of the darkest moments during the illness where I was having trouble finding the strength to want to wake up in the morning. I didn't want to wake up anymore. And here comes this little dog who was sick in some of the same ways that I was. She was bleeding. I was bleeding. I just saw this little thing that needed these surgeries and was in danger of being put down because the shelter didn't have the money to pay for these surgeries. And I've never had a pet in my life. Right. Never wanted a pet. Like, I just, I'm not. But she chose me, and it was almost like she was saying, please help me, and then I'll help you. And so I took her, I got her the surgeries, and then she would lay on my, where the surgeries were on me. She would come and lay on them. When I didn't want to eat, because eating for me got really painful, and I started losing weight, she would make sure that I would go and eat. I think she wanted snacks, but she would make sure you have to do this, you have to do this. When I was in pain and laying on my side, she would come take me outside, take me outside. She knew when I needed to walk, when I needed to eat, she could tell when I was having trouble. So I nursed this little thing back and then she walks me back into life, yeah, so I take her everywhere. But sometimes guys are like, hey, what's up, man, what's up with the little dog? And I'm like- You're a tough guy, come on, what's wrong with that image? What happens when I put the dog down? I'm like, no, no, no, let's not do this, let's not do, I try to be, no, no, no, no, no, but you know how it is. I mentioned your fiancee, Caitlin O'Connor. What is something that going through this experience taught you about love and relationships? Well, very early on, I wanted to be honest with Caitlin and I was scared about being accepted if I opened up to somebody about my illness. I was a complicated person at that point. And on our second date, I told her the truth about what had happened to me because I didn't want her to feel like I tricked her or baited her into being with somebody. And so that kind of love and acceptance, it made me understand that I didn't have to feel the kind of shame or guilt or of having this illness and having been through that, that there was somebody who would love me for it and unconditionally. Well, I mean, we just started talking about this, there's so much more to talk about which leads me to this. Bloodlines now available where you can pick up books but also Sunday Joe will be signing his book at the Americana at Brand in Glendale. And before the signing, I will sit down with Joe again and we'll continue this conversation. You can get tickets to this event at eventbrite.com. Thank you so much for coming in. You're incredible. We're so glad you're doing well and really appreciate it. Thank you for agreeing to come out to talk to me in Glendale on Sunday. Maybe we'll go to the carousel afterwards, right?