Joe Manganiello, the actor with a thousand abs: “Reified me? Of course. Of course. Yes. It's the job”

During an acting class at the university, the professor asked Joe Manganiello (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 45 years old) to sit in the middle of a circle so that his classmates shouted their first impressions at him.

Among them were: "Goes on a motorcycle", "Drinks beer", "He fights in bars", "Restores old cars" or "He took three girls to the promotion dance".

Manganiello doesn't actually drink (he's been sober for 19 years) and didn't attend his prom either.

He preferred to go to the movies to see a revival of

.

Now, thanks to the

series , he finally fulfills his childhood dream of starring in a science fiction story.

Because Joe Manganiello is, above all else, a geek.

“The science fiction novels I read as a child had a foreboding air.

addresses the issue of overpopulation, humans have reached the point where they have to colonize the Moon because the situation on Earth has become unsustainable," he explains of the series, which premieres today on AMC+ (a streaming service which is available on Orange TV, Vodafone TV, Jazztel TV and as a channel on Amazon Prime Video.).

portrays a utopia in which a group of colonists settles on the Moon to develop technology and find the necessary resources for the survival of the species, but a murder by extremist earthlings alters the harmony and prosperity of the colony.

Manganiello plays a bodyguard on a sinister mission who he claims he played as "Dick Cheney after taking acid."

For the actor,

is an opportunity to unleash his childhood imagination.

It wasn't easy being a skinny kid in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, which Manganiello likens to the series

: "It was 90210 Pittsburgh."

His first addiction, as he explains, were the novels of science fiction authors such as Bradbury, Clarke or Hamilton.

The second, role-playing games.

“I loved seeing the shocked faces on my friends' faces as I told them the stories and introduced them to the worlds I had created,” he recalls.

At the age of 13, he joined the gym and his social life forked.

He was comfortable among the fantasy kids and was part of the film club ("There were three Asian kids and me," he recalls), but he also spent Fridays drinking beer with the football team and cheerleaders.

He was captain of the soccer, volleyball, and basketball teams.

“Sometimes my own soccer teammates picked on my friends because they were weaker.

I stood up for them.

I told them to leave them alone or we were going to have to fight.

I had a good time with the

, but I also had a good time with the athletes.

I liked their competitive mentality”, he admits.

A young Joe Manganiello photographed at a fashion event in 2002. Donato Sardella (WireImage)

This ability to adapt was complicated when, upon arriving at university, Manganiello began to feel the oddball in all areas of his life.

He then thought that alcohol could help him allay those insecurities.

"I didn't know what to do, I didn't feel like he belonged to any group," he confesses.

“All those groups of people that I have told you about before… I began to feel that I was different, more sensitive, I feel things more deeply.

I felt alone.

And alcohol gave me the opportunity to drink until I blocked out that part of myself and just be like everyone else.

It helped me to fit into a category, and sadly, at that age it is very important to fit into a category.

He drank to fit in.

And it also helped me to turn off the brain.

When I discovered the drink I thought, 'Wow, I'm going to do this all day,

The interpretation was his other mechanism to stop being himself.

“It allowed me to put on a mask and be someone else.

Then he would take me off the stage, I would go to the bar and I was still not myself, ”he explains.

Three days after landing in Los Angeles, in 2001, he landed his first role: Flash Thompson, Peter Parker's high school nemesis in

.

Or so it has always been told.

Manganiello actually spent four months suffering from the uncertainty.

“I was confirmed that I had been given the role, but two weeks later the studio head decided to do more castings on his behalf without telling me or my manager.

Imagine how disheartening it was to find out that the part wasn't actually mine and that the studio boss didn't like it.

That he didn't want me in his movie.

In the Hollywood machine you can't get your hopes up, ”he laments.

In the end he did make

, but alcoholism got in the way of his career taking off.

He found himself "without a home, without a car, and without a job," he told the

.

“Now that I'm older I understand that I was someone special, it just took me a while to develop it,” he says.

His filmography has a gap of four years, during which Manganiello worked as

, bodyguard for a rock group and operator of a demolition machine.

He also resold cartons of tobacco.

The latter caused him so much remorse that he donated his car to the American Association Against Cancer.

On his return to Hollywood in 2006, the actor had "changed in every way possible."

His new path began with meditation.

“I had to take the whole car apart, clean every part and put it all back together.

It is very difficult to find a person who shares all my interests.

I met him once, with a friend from school, but lost contact when he joined the navy.

My friends are very eclectic.

If you saw me with them you would seem like a different person with each one of them.

I love that, but I think they hate it in Hollywood, ”he says with a laugh.

Joe Manganiello and Sofia Vergara at the 'Vanity Fair' Oscars 2020 After Party. Rich Fury/VF20 (Getty Images for Vanity Fair)

The industry pigeonholed him into brainless hunk roles like the one on the sitcom

, where he played Marshall's party animal friend.

“I was interested in writing, directing and producing, but the smartest option to get ahead financially was to focus on acting,” he says.

His height was sometimes a

: being 1.96 he lost many roles because the leading star did not want to share the screen with someone much taller than him.

But Alexander Skarsgard, the villain of the HBO series

, was 1.94 meters tall and needed a rival to match him.

In 2010 Manganiello entered

for a six-episode arc and his character, the werewolf Alcide, caused such a sensation among the audience (then social networks began to influence the future of the series in real time) that he ended up staying for five seasons.

“I had no job guarantees because I wasn't part of the main cast and, being a guest star, I was paid at the lowest rate.

But by the time HBO offered me a multi-season deal I had already been on the cover of

and posed for GQ in Europe.

Let's just say it was a good time to negotiate that contract,” he recalls.

During the filming of

, Manganiello had to go to the gym twice a day (he claims that if he doesn't train he deflates and becomes skinny again) because Alcide spent almost the entire series without a shirt.

In fact, the first scene that Manganiello recorded consisted of a complete nude that left its mark on the school bus that was passing in front of the shoot just at that moment.

The popularity of Manganiello, who while still on

starred in the male stripper comedy

and its sequel, coincided with the literary phenomenon

and the demolition of the cultural taboo around female sexual desire.

At an MTV awards show, comedian Chelsea Handler said she didn't want to go home in a car but "in the face of Joe Manganiello."

On Twitter, actresses Octavia Spencer, Yvette Nicole Brown and Retta got into a comedic argument to decide which of them would sleep with the actor first.

“Reified?” he asks after a long pause.

"Let's be realistic.

If you are in a very sexual series like

, of course it will happen.

It's HBO.

I think HBO gets more out of its actors because of the reputation it has.

And the same with

.

What are you going to do, start crying?

No. You're in a movie about male strippers.

You work with Soderbergh, McConaughey, Channing and all these guys on a hilarious comedy.

What are you going to do?

Refuse to stay in a thong?

That's the paper.

I know it's scary, but go to the gym and work it out.

It's just that I do not know what to tell you.

Reified?

Of course.

Of course.

Of course.

Yes. It's the job.”

Or as he himself explained in

in 2013, “I did Ibsen and Chekhov for years, obviously I didn't get the recognition that I have now, you have to ride the horse whichever way it goes”.

Manganiello tried to use his popularity to diversify his career.

He played a parody of himself in

(2016), tried his hand at action movies in

(2014), and even appeared in a Terrence Malick movie,

(2015).

He published a book on

,

, whose foreword was written by his friend and mentor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And in the midst of this reinvention he met the love of his life, Colombian actress Sofía Vergara.

Manganiello traveled to New Orleans, where she was filming, to invite her out of it.

He showed her the issue of

that took him out on the cover naming him “The sexiest bachelor in Hollywood” and boasted, in Spanish: “Number one”.

She reacted by flipping through the rest of the magazine: "I'm going to see what the others are."

They were married six months later.

Manganiello and Vergara are one of the gossip press' favorite couples.

They are news for their romantic gestures (he wrote her a 40-page letter for their first anniversary), their friendliness (they waited in line like any tourist to enter the Vatican) and the Instagram photos with their chihuahua Bubbles, to which Manganiello takes everywhere: filming, concerts, gyms.

He even got her into an IMAX theater to see Dune.

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Joe Manganiello's big pending project is to adapt the role-playing game

.

Today he continues to organize games at his house and the guest list includes Hollywood figures such as James Gunn (director of

and

) or Dan Weiss and David Benioff (creators of

).

But the biggest thorn in his career is not having made a comic book movie: “I have always thought that there is a great superhero or supervillain for me, but it has not materialized for one reason or another,” he has confessed.

In 2011 he auditioned to play Superman in

, but the shoot was incompatible with

and he still regrets that he didn't even get to try on the suit.

"While all the superhero roles were distributed," she explained in reference to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "I had a contract with a television series."

Zack Snyder, the director of

and early brainchild of the DC Cinematic Universe, finally gave him his chance in

.

Manganiello appeared in a post-credits scene that suggested that when Ben Affleck stars in his solo Batman movie, he will be the villain.

"Playing Batman Villain Deathstroke Could Transform Joe Manganiello's Career,"

headlined .

However, the continuous changes in Warner's management ended up sending the project to limbo.

"What do you want me to tell you?" He now tells ICON with resignation.

“It is not my property.

I am not the owner.

They canceled

, they canceled

, they canceled all the Suicide Squad that I was going to be a part of.

What am i going to do?

It is what it is.

How many times can they say no to my movie?

You have to let it go.

It's one of those situations like the one I was telling you about before

: You get your dream role, you start working on it, and all of a sudden, 'Hey, man, it's not going to happen.'

Nobody is interested.

Or maybe they are, but not with me.

There have been two times when they looked for another actor for that role, you know?

They took it from me and gave it to someone else.

What are you going to do?

You put your seatbelt on and hope you don't break every bone in your body when this crashes."

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