Actor Joe Manganiello dismissed claims from ex-wife Sofía Vergara that they got divorced after seven years of marriage because they were not on the same page with having kids.
"My marriage broke up because my husband was younger; he wanted to have kids and I didn't want to be an old mom," Vergara, 52, told El País earlier this year. "I feel it's not fair to the baby. I respect whoever does it, but that's not for me anymore."
Manganiello, 47, broke his silence, telling Men's Journal in an interview published Tuesday that Vergara's remarks were "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," he said. "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.' 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."
Manganiello admitted that he wanted to have children, but their disagreement "wasn't inevitably why everything ended."
"It's because two people grew apart, and sometimes that happens," he said. "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'? That's never who I was."
Vergara and Manganiello revealed their split in July 2023.
"We have made the difficult decision to divorce," they said in a joint statement at the time, according to Page Six. "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."
Two days later, Manganiello filed for divorce from Vergara, citing "irreconcilable differences." He stated the date of separation as July 2 and confirmed that a prenuptial agreement was in place.
Subsequently, Vergara submitted a separate filing, requesting the court to honor the terms of the prenup.
The divorce was finalized in February.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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