Engaged Joe Manganiello thinks he’d still be married to Sofía Vergara if not for mystery illness

Joe Manganiello thinks he and ex-wife Sofía Vergara “possibly” could have stayed married if not for the mystery illness he suffered from during their relationship.

The 49-year-old actor got candid about his 2023 split from Vergara during an appearance on SiriusXM’s “Radio Andy” Wednesday, when host Andy Cohen asked whether he thought their marriage would have “survived” if he had been in better health.

“Possibly, maybe,” replied Manganiello, who is now engaged to Caitlin O’Connor after two years of dating.

Cohen, 58, also asked the “True Blood” alum whether he regretted not being in better health during their marriage.

“Yeah, of course,” Manganiello responded, adding that he often thinks about it when he sees photos of the pair from when they first started dating.

“It’s heartbreaking when you look at these two people with life ahead of them, but for us, we didn’t know what was ahead,” he continued. “I felt guilty for a long time.”

Manganiello went on to explain that he had spoken to Vergara, now 54, about his feelings of guilt at the time.

“I felt guilty. I felt like a burden. I knew that everyone was sick of me, sick of watching me go through this,” he said, before revealing that he hasn’t spoken to Vergara since they finalized their divorce in February 2024.

Vergara, for her part, previously said that Manganiello’s desire to have children — while she did not want to be an “old mom” — led to their divorce, a claim he later disputed, saying it wasn’t “inevitably why everything ended.”

In his new memoir, “Bloodlines,” released Oct. 13, Manganiello reveals that he battled life-threatening “autoimmune-related illnesses” for seven years, ultimately leading to the “amputation” of an organ.

The “Spider-Man” actor previously told People in a statement that it was “the most brutally difficult time of [his] life, one [he] wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but also [his] greatest adventure.”

After turning to unorthodox forms of treatment, Manganiello claims that a Cuba-based shaman told him over the phone that someone who still had feelings for Vergara had put a curse on him.

“Someone from your past is still in love with you. He put a voodoo curse on your husband. He did it in New Orleans,” he recalls the shaman telling them.

Elsewhere in his memoir, Manganiello claims that Vergara “ridiculed” him while he was sick, particularly over his dog, Bubbles, whom he adopted in 2019 while struggling with suicidal thoughts.

“I had to give my gun away because I kept thinking about it, and then the dog came,” he writes. “I went from being the patient to the caretaker.”

Manganiello also claims that Vergara refused to hug him, even when he begged her for her affection during his illness.

In response, the “Modern Family” alum shared a post about “narcissistic men” from her 35-year-old son, Manolo, whom she shares with her first husband, Joe Gonzalez.

“Remember kids … it doesn’t matter how much you do for [a narcissist],” the post read. “They will resent you for it and nothing will ever be enough, and they’ll always somehow try to paint you as the bad guy.”

Meanwhile, Manganiello addressed the backlash from his ex-wife during an appearance on “CBS Mornings” this month.

“Well, I think anybody who said that should read the book first and understand what the book is actually about, because it’s not about that,” he said. “It’s about the suffering I went through.”