Actor Joe Manganiello released “Bloodlines,” a memoir about a secret 7-year health battle that led him to his family’s survival of the Armenian Genocide, on Tuesday, October 13. Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, published the 320-page book.
Manganiello played the werewolf Alcide Herveaux on HBO’s “True Blood,” Big Dick Richie in “Magic Mike” and “Magic Mike XXL,” and Flash Thompson in 2002’s “Spider-Man.” The illness was kept from the public until the book was announced.
The publisher writes that a series of autoimmune illnesses hit his skin, thyroid, eyes, lungs and digestive system. Doctors could not fully explain his condition. Coverage ahead of the release reported multiple near-death experiences and a life-saving organ amputation.
“It was the most brutally difficult time of my life, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but also my greatest adventure,” Manganiello said in a statement to PEOPLE.
Looking for answers, he turned to shamanic practices, pagan rituals, ancient myths and old family records. That search led him to his Armenian ancestry and the inherited trauma he carried.
His maternal great-grandmother, Terviz “Rose” Darakjian, survived the Armenian Genocide in 1915. Turkish soldiers shot her husband and 7 of her 8 children dead and shot her too. She lived by pretending to be dead.
With a bullet still lodged in her body, she strapped her infant to her back and swam across the Euphrates River. The baby drowned in the crossing. She then lived in a cave with other refugees until German soldiers picked her up.
Manganiello told her story on the PBS series “Finding Your Roots,” hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., in an episode that aired February 7, 2023.
In May 2024, he spent 10 days in Armenia at the invitation of the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF), on whose board he sits. On May 29 he toured the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan with Diaspora Affairs High Commissioner Zareh Sinanyan and left a note in the memorial book of honored guests.
During the same visit he planted a fir tree in the Memory Alley at Tsitsernakaberd in memory of his great-grandmother and grandmother.
He has 2 Armenian words tattooed on his forearms: “???????” (angel), which he showed in August 2023, and “????” (luck), which he showed in April 2025.
COAF gave him its Humanitarian Award at its 20th anniversary gala in New York in 2023. In spring 2025 he headlined the Armenian Assembly of America’s Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C., and on April 2 gave the keynote address at the Congressional Armenian Genocide Commemoration on Capitol Hill.
