Joe Manganiello says Armie Hammer-recommended second shaman told him he wasn’t meant to marry Sofía Vergara

The spiritual practitioner also suggested the actors’ marriage was a “booby trap” that led to Manganiello’s mysterious autoimmune disease.

Joe Manganiello went to not one, but two shamans.

After Manganiello consulted a Cuba-based shaman about his mysterious health issues, he revealed that his friend, Armie Hammer, suggested another spiritual practitioner. Although Manganiello was hesitant, he agreed to meet the second shaman.

Entertainment Weekly reached out to a representative for Hammer for comment.

“Without 100 percent certainty that my illness had lifted, I wasn’t out of the woods yet, so I summoned what little energy I had in my reserve tank of open-mindedness, shrugged, and took down the shaman’s number,” Manganiello wrote in his memoir, Bloodlines, which is out now.

The shaman claimed that the 49-year-old had “never booted up” because his mother had him via C-section. As a result, the man said Manganiello’s “body keeps hiccuping, trying to kill you so that it can restart itself.”

The two then discussed the Magic Mike star’s relationship with his then-wife Sofía Vergara, and their struggles with fertility. After Manganiello explained that they were unable to have children and that their plans to grow a family through a surrogate were halted due to his health condition, the shaman claimed that these issues stemmed from an incompatibility between the couple.

“You were never supposed to marry her,” Manganiello recalled the shaman saying. “I mean, of course you did, but it was never meant to last, and you were never going to have a kid with her like a gay couple with the eggs and the surrogate. You were the big hot guy on TV, and she was the hot girl, and so yeah, that made sense, but she wasn’t right for you. Look at what it did to you, s—ting yourself to death while she parades you around like you’re her little boy. That’s not who you are.”

EW reached out to representatives for Vergara for comment.

The True Blood alum then said he was healthy at the beginning of his relationship to Vergara. In response, the shaman said that their engagement triggered his health problems, as Manganiello said that was when he started getting sick.

“Your marriage to her triggered a booby trap, and your body collapsed,” the shaman continued. “The foundation collapsed. That was the trigger . . . when you realized she couldn’t have a kid with you. You weren’t going to leave her over it, and so, as soon as you realized that, your body tried to kill itself so you could get out of it without having it be anyone’s fault. Divorce by death!”

The shaman also told Manganiello that he had ancestral trauma and suffering. The spiritual practitioner performed a ritual to cleanse the Spider-Man actor of the dark energy surrounding him. While Manganiello admitted that the shaman seemed a little kooky, he liked that the man was “recasting my tale of suffering into a spiritual hero’s journey for the post-modern era.”

“When you stepped back, it was out there, but as crazy it all may have sounded to a random person on the street, it was actually an incredibly grounded explanation,” Manganiello said of the shaman’s words to him.

Manganiello had previously visited a Cuba-based shaman in Ecuador for answers about his health issues. The man told him that the problems had stemmed from a voodoo curse that one of Vergara’s exes put on him.

“Someone from your past is still in love with you,” the first shaman had told the couple. “He put a voodoo curse on your husband. He did it in New Orleans. Your husband needs to be cleansed and protected. I can do this. I can help him.”

Manganiello and Vergara separated in 2023, after seven years of marriage. Their divorce was finalized the following year.

“As two people that love and care for one another very much, we politely ask for respect of our privacy at this time as we navigate this new phase of our lives,” they said in a joint statement at the time of their separation.

Bloodlines is now available wherever books are sold.

Via: Entertainment Weekly