Latest / On with Mario Interviews / Joe Manganiello
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: With Mario Lopez.
- 0:03Speaker 2: WRL Mario Lopez, joining me right now. You know him
- 0:06Speaker 2: from hits like Magic Mike, True Blood, a whole bunch
- 0:08Speaker 2: of stuff. My man, actor Joe Manganiello.
- 0:11Speaker 1: How you doing, Joe?
- 0:12Speaker 3: I'm good. How are you?
- 0:14Speaker 1: I'm well. Nice talking to you, buddy. Nice to see you.
- 0:16Speaker 1: It's been a minute. Congrats on the new memoir. It's
- 0:19Speaker 1: out now.
- 0:20Speaker 2: It's called Bloodlines. And you're getting into some pretty heavy
- 0:25Speaker 2: stuff with it. You have some sort of autoimmune illness
- 0:28Speaker 2: that almost.
- 0:29Speaker 1: Took your life, right?
- 0:31Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. For seven, seven years.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Yeah. So explain, I know you delve into it in
- 0:36Speaker 2: the book, but as far as the cliff note version,
- 0:40Speaker 2: please explain.
- 0:41Speaker 3: I mean, well, that, yeah, that's, that's the nature of
- 0:44Speaker 3: the book.
- 0:44Speaker 4: I lived, I lived with a life-threatening illness for seven years.
- 0:48Speaker 4: I hid it from the public for the better part
- 0:51Speaker 4: of a decade. And this is the first time I'm
- 0:54Speaker 4: talking about it all publicly.
- 0:55Speaker 2: Which is incredibly ironic considering you look like the picture
- 0:58Speaker 2: of health. And I've always been in great shape. How
- 1:02Speaker 2: did you end up getting better from this? I mean,
- 1:04Speaker 2: I wasn't always in great shape.
- 1:05Speaker 4: I lost 60 pounds in two weeks after having my
- 1:08Speaker 4: large intestine amputated. Last minute surgery to save my life.
- 1:11Speaker 4: My entire large intestine had turned into pus. It wouldn't
- 1:15Speaker 4: show up on any sort of scan. And they had
- 1:17Speaker 4: to cut me open at the 11th hour. I was
- 1:19Speaker 4: hemorrhaging blood and wasn't going to last through the night.
- 1:22Speaker 4: I woke up after a 10-hour surgery and had to
- 1:24Speaker 4: be informed that my large intestine was removed.
- 1:26Speaker 3: To save my life and buy time.
- 1:28Speaker 4: And that I was left with potentially a permanent ostomy
- 1:31Speaker 4: bag that I wore for a while. In fact, uh,
- 1:34Speaker 4: during the shooting of justice league, when I was playing
- 1:36Speaker 4: the character death stroke, um, in Monaco shooting the end
- 1:40Speaker 4: scene for justice league, that was meant to then, uh,
- 1:44Speaker 4: advertise my, uh, matchup against Batman and the Ben Affleck
- 1:48Speaker 4: directed Batman movie. No one ever knew it, but, um,
- 1:52Speaker 4: I had an ostomy bag on under my armor and
- 1:55Speaker 4: couldn't eat for almost 24 hours before so that so
- 1:59Speaker 4: there wouldn't output.
- 2:00Speaker 3: So, yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of like chapter one.
- 2:04Speaker 4: And then the rest of the book is is my
- 2:07Speaker 4: journey about, you know, fighting my body, fighting itself in
- 2:12Speaker 4: a multitude of ways and me traveling the world to
- 2:16Speaker 4: try to find a cure when the doctor's kept shrugging
- 2:19Speaker 4: their shoulders. And then it actually took me backwards in
- 2:21Speaker 4: time because, um, I come to the understanding that.
- 2:25Speaker 3: What happened to me wasn't random that, uh, I.
- 2:28Speaker 4: Inherited, um, uh, trauma and I can trace it back
- 2:33Speaker 4: on my mother's side of the family to, um, my
- 2:36Speaker 4: great grandmother, who was.
- 2:37Speaker 3: A survivor of the Armenian genocide.
- 2:39Speaker 4: Uh, there was some, like some stuff that went on
- 2:41Speaker 4: to my father's side too, but, but primarily the, that
- 2:44Speaker 4: major illness that, um, you know, that exploded, uh, came
- 2:48Speaker 4: from there. Wow.
- 2:49Speaker 2: What a, what a journey that you had to go
- 2:52Speaker 2: on and, and you handled it well, no one ever
- 2:54Speaker 2: would have, uh, would have known you were battling something
- 2:57Speaker 2: like that.
- 2:57Speaker 4: And, uh, if people were paying attention, they did. And
- 3:00Speaker 4: there were a lot of people that actually made comments
- 3:02Speaker 4: to me and snarky comments. There were people online that
- 3:05Speaker 4: commented on my weight loss.
- 3:06Speaker 3: I actually talk about it in the book.
- 3:08Speaker 4: I remember, um, meeting Chadwick Boseman and, um, you know,
- 3:12Speaker 4: he was, he was also suffering in silence. And when he,
- 3:14Speaker 4: you know, people were saying things about him, why is
- 3:17Speaker 4: he so skinny? Why do you lose so much money?
- 3:19Speaker 4: You know, all that stuff. And, uh, and then of course,
- 3:21Speaker 4: you know, turns out he was fighting cancer. and didn't
- 3:25Speaker 4: feel like being the sick person in public, similar to me.
- 3:28Speaker 4: And when he passed away, I wondered, did those people
- 3:32Speaker 4: that made all those comments, did they feel bad about that?
- 3:35Speaker 3: Because that certainly was the case with me.
- 3:37Speaker 2: They should feel bad. You never know what someone's going
- 3:40Speaker 2: through or struggling with. You should always show grace and
- 3:43Speaker 2: and have a little patience. So I'm sure you're going
- 3:45Speaker 2: to wear and raise the awareness level in people that
- 3:47Speaker 2: might be struggling or dealing with something that they don't
- 3:49Speaker 2: know how to handle. I'm sure it's a, it's really
- 3:51Speaker 2: going to help them, man. That's going to be fascinating
- 3:53Speaker 2: to read. What other kinds of topics are you touching
- 3:55Speaker 2: on too in the book?
- 3:58Speaker 4: I mean, you know, it's, it's the sum total of,
- 4:01Speaker 4: of the 10 years of, of struggle and silence and
- 4:05Speaker 4: pretty much, you know, when it went into that. Um, but, um,
- 4:08Speaker 4: but really the book is about spirituality because, um, I
- 4:13Speaker 4: realized through the process of writing the book and kind
- 4:17Speaker 4: of sorting out what I went through that, uh, that
- 4:20Speaker 4: my illness was like, and believe me, I was kicking
- 4:24Speaker 4: and screaming through this process, you know, but, um, but
- 4:27Speaker 4: the illness stripped me of everything and, um, stripped me
- 4:31Speaker 4: down to my core, the core of my being. And, uh,
- 4:34Speaker 4: and I was being, I was being asked to transform.
- 4:39Speaker 4: into something else? Should I survive the torture? And so
- 4:44Speaker 4: it's a book about surrender. It's a book about hope
- 4:49Speaker 4: where there is none.
- 4:50Speaker 3: It's a book.
- 4:51Speaker 4: About picking yourself up off the floor constantly and continuing
- 4:55Speaker 4: to move forward. And it's also about honoring your ancestors
- 4:59Speaker 4: and the things that they went through.
- 5:00Speaker 3: And it's about spirituality.
- 5:02Speaker 4: It's about, I wind up inadvertently um through the journey
- 5:08Speaker 4: getting introduced to like all the religions and beliefs of
- 5:12Speaker 4: my ancestors like kind of unknowingly like i i you
- 5:16Speaker 4: know there's there are there are the book starts with
- 5:19Speaker 4: the joseph campbell quote and and really what you know
- 5:22Speaker 4: what he believed was that we're all trying to tell
- 5:24Speaker 4: a multitude of stories about one thing and we're all
- 5:27Speaker 4: trying to explain this one thing why we're here and
- 5:30Speaker 4: you know the nature of humanity and suffering and uh
- 5:32Speaker 4: and that is uh That is the journey that I
- 5:37Speaker 4: went on.
- 5:37Speaker 2: I'm sure it was therapeutic to write the book. Did
- 5:39Speaker 2: you build some serious spiritual muscle? Would you say you're
- 5:41Speaker 2: a stronger person?
- 5:42Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it was therapeutic at all. In fact,
- 5:45Speaker 3: it was painful.
- 5:45Speaker 4: It was brutal to sit down and kind of bleed
- 5:48Speaker 4: that out onto the page.
- 5:52Speaker 3: It was hard, man.
- 5:53Speaker 4: Especially when it came to the audio book. I mean,
- 5:57Speaker 4: you think about writing down the darkest, hardest moments of
- 6:03Speaker 4: your life, even ones that are written, suffered in silence
- 6:06Speaker 4: or conversations you had. And then you go and you
- 6:10Speaker 4: play the characters having those conversations. Like, I mean, that's not, it's,
- 6:15Speaker 4: it's less therapy and more, um, it's almost, it's like a,
- 6:20Speaker 4: like an extreme performance art is really what the book was.
- 6:23Speaker 2: Do you get into, um, professional, uh, journey? personal relationships,
- 6:30Speaker 2: all that sort of.
- 6:31Speaker 3: Stuff in the book?
- 6:32Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean, like I said, the first chapter
- 6:34Speaker 4: is centered around, I mean, I just kind of throw
- 6:37Speaker 4: the baby into the tub or the deep end of
- 6:41Speaker 4: the pool in the first chapter, which you're catching me
- 6:47Speaker 4: midstream trying to shoot this end credit sequence in Justice
- 6:52Speaker 4: League as something severely wrong with me, and I'm I'm
- 6:58Speaker 4: in Monaco by myself, and I'm covered in sores all
- 7:04Speaker 4: over my body that are attempting– they're about.
- 7:06Speaker 3: To take over my face, and I need to go
- 7:08Speaker 3: shoot the scene.
- 7:10Speaker 4: So it gets into that side of it, and there
- 7:12Speaker 4: were also all these other professional disappointments. It was almost
- 7:16Speaker 4: like I had all of these life-changing jobs in entertainment
- 7:20Speaker 4: that came to me, and I was hoping that each
- 7:23Speaker 4: one would somehow– like exempt me from the suffering that
- 7:28Speaker 4: I was going through or meant that it was all
- 7:29Speaker 4: going to end.
- 7:30Speaker 3: And I was going to be okay.
- 7:32Speaker 4: And I was going to shoot these things and my
- 7:34Speaker 4: life was going to go back to the way that
- 7:36Speaker 4: it was, but that wasn't the case. And every single
- 7:39Speaker 4: thing that came my way during that period just turned
- 7:42Speaker 4: to dust in my fingers. And it really forced me
- 7:45Speaker 4: into a position, whether I liked it or not. I mean,
- 7:47Speaker 4: I didn't like it. I mean, it wasn't about like
- 7:49Speaker 4: it or not. It was like, I hated it. I didn't,
- 7:51Speaker 4: I didn't want this. And I, but I had to
- 7:53Speaker 4: get to a place where I had to accept my
- 7:55Speaker 4: life for what it was. And I had to understand that, um,
- 7:58Speaker 4: that I was meant to go through this. Um, I
- 8:01Speaker 4: was meant to, to write this book and be here
- 8:05Speaker 4: right now.
- 8:05Speaker 1: How are you feeling right now?
- 8:07Speaker 3: I'm great.
- 8:08Speaker 4: I mean, you know, spoiler, but it all went away
- 8:10Speaker 4: about four years ago. Like it's a miracle. And I talk,
- 8:14Speaker 4: I talk about that in the book as well.
- 8:16Speaker 3: Yeah. Why that happened, why I think that happened.
- 8:18Speaker 4: And there are some great, great thinkers and, um, you know, um, scientists,
- 8:25Speaker 4: spiritual people, doctors, uh, Dr.
- 8:27Speaker 3: Gabor Mate is, is in my book.
- 8:29Speaker 4: I want him having a conversation with him and he's
- 8:31Speaker 4: the world's foremost leading expert in generational trauma, epigenetics, how
- 8:34Speaker 4: that's all passed down. And, um, um, you know, so
- 8:38Speaker 4: I have some conversations with people about what happened to
- 8:40Speaker 4: me and, and, and how, and then also how I
- 8:42Speaker 4: achieved a spontaneous remission.
- 8:45Speaker 2: That must put a whole new perspective on life, huh?
- 8:48Speaker 4: Yeah, man, it's before and after, for sure.
- 8:52Speaker 3: I was over the line for a long time. And
- 8:58Speaker 3: I'm back on this side now.
- 9:00Speaker 4: And, you know, I don't know everything, but I know
- 9:05Speaker 4: more than I did before.
- 9:06Speaker 3: That's for sure.
- 9:08Speaker 1: Glad you're healthy, man.
- 9:08Speaker 3: That's awesome. Thanks, man.
- 9:09Speaker 2: You're also going to be doing some book signings, including
- 9:12Speaker 2: one on October 24th at Barnes & Noble inside the
- 9:16Speaker 2: Americana Mall. Great place right here in Glendale, California.
- 9:20Speaker 1: Have you started already to do these or?
- 9:23Speaker 3: No.
- 9:23Speaker 4: So I've just been, you know. banking interviews like the
- 9:29Speaker 4: ones I'm doing with you. And only like a few,
- 9:31Speaker 4: you know, I'm not, I'm not like going crazy with
- 9:33Speaker 4: it all because it's really hard to tell the story
- 9:35Speaker 4: over and over again. But, um, but I'm going to
- 9:37Speaker 4: do signings and talks in New York, LA and Pittsburgh.
- 9:42Speaker 3: Okay. So far, so far.
- 9:44Speaker 1: Solid, solid. Uh, you still a huge Dungeons and Dragons fan?
- 9:48Speaker 4: So I'm a chief creative officer of the icons line
- 9:50Speaker 4: within Dungeons and Dragons. So I'm in line, um, uh,
- 9:54Speaker 4: develop product, uh, primarily this line is about, um, collaborating
- 10:01Speaker 4: with some of the great creators that, um, that, for
- 10:06Speaker 4: whatever reason, found.
- 10:07Speaker 3: Themselves outside the walls of the castle of D & D.
- 10:11Speaker 4: And I'm bringing them back in and collaborating with them
- 10:14Speaker 4: and writing a whole series of product that gets back
- 10:19Speaker 4: to the creativity and imagination of some of those legendary
- 10:23Speaker 4: fantasy creators.
- 10:25Speaker 2: They did movies back in the day, right? Yeah, they
- 10:27Speaker 2: did like straight to video. I was going to say,
- 10:30Speaker 2: because I remember seeing some.
- 10:31Speaker 3: Bad, bad movies. Yes, yes, yes, they did.
- 10:34Speaker 1: That might be something fun to explore later on. Trying
- 10:36Speaker 1: to fix that too.
- 10:37Speaker 4: Well, I got involved with D & D because I
- 10:38Speaker 4: was hired to develop their series of fantasy novels called Dragonlance,
- 10:44Speaker 4: which were my favorite books growing up.
- 10:45Speaker 3: These New York Times bestselling fantasy novels.
- 10:48Speaker 4: And so that's actually how I got involved as an
- 10:52Speaker 4: adult with the company.
- 10:53Speaker 3: And then it led to, you know, the.
- 10:57Speaker 4: writing adventures and working on product and, you know, creating
- 11:01Speaker 4: toys and, and, and things, you know, kind of all
- 11:05Speaker 4: that stuff that I, I loved as a kid.
- 11:07Speaker 3: And it was actually It started really.
- 11:10Speaker 4: Happening when I got sick because I didn't think that
- 11:13Speaker 4: I was going to be able to film movies anymore.
- 11:15Speaker 4: I didn't think that I was going to be able
- 11:16Speaker 4: to work outside the house anymore. And I didn't know
- 11:20Speaker 4: how long I was going to be around on planet Earth.
- 11:22Speaker 4: And I just figured I might as well going out
- 11:24Speaker 4: something that would have made the kid in me happy.
- 11:27Speaker 4: And so I started getting more and more involved with
- 11:29Speaker 4: D & D and then.
- 11:31Speaker 3: Started getting urged more and more to write. And so
- 11:34Speaker 3: here we are. Good for you, man. Good for you.
- 11:37Speaker 2: And you also joined the cast of the hit Netflix
- 11:39Speaker 2: series One Piece. For those who may not be familiar,
- 11:43Speaker 2: what's it about?
- 11:46Speaker 4: One Piece is the number one selling manga and anime
- 11:52Speaker 4: in world history.
- 11:53Speaker 3: Wow.
- 11:54Speaker 4: And it started in Japan in the late 90s, and
- 11:58Speaker 4: it sold more issues. One Piece has sold more issues
- 12:01Speaker 4: than Batman or Superman.
- 12:03Speaker 3: Whoa.
- 12:04Speaker 4: So if you think about world popularity, you know, in America,
- 12:08Speaker 4: we got comic books and cartoons.
- 12:09Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 12:10Speaker 4: But out of Japan came manga and anime and the
- 12:12Speaker 4: rest of the world got manga and anime. And so,
- 12:15Speaker 4: you know, my character, I'm a pirate who's also a
- 12:22Speaker 4: gangster and a casino owner.
- 12:24Speaker 3: And he has an underwater lair and he has an
- 12:27Speaker 3: army of.
- 12:28Speaker 4: Assassins that do his bidding and And I have a
- 12:30Speaker 4: giant prehistoric crocodile that I feed people to. And it's
- 12:35Speaker 4: just an absolute blast. And I also have the power
- 12:41Speaker 4: of the sand sand fruit, which allows me to turn
- 12:44Speaker 4: into sand and cause earthquakes and things.
- 12:48Speaker 1: Well, dude, you can't get more badass than that.
- 12:50Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I'm kind of like. Like a
- 12:53Speaker 3: Darth Vader of the rest of the world.
- 12:58Speaker 4: And also, I mean, it's super popular in the United States, too.
- 13:00Speaker 4: I mean, season two of One Piece premiered at number
- 13:07Speaker 4: one in 86 countries.
- 13:08Speaker 2: Wow.
- 13:09Speaker 3: That really is. Wow, that's awesome, man.
- 13:11Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty cool. And this is fun, too.
- 13:14Speaker 2: Over the summer, you were on an episode of Larry
- 13:16Speaker 2: David's new show, Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.
- 13:19Speaker 3: Yes.
- 13:19Speaker 2: Uh, how, how was, uh, being on that set and
- 13:22Speaker 2: how was it working with Larry?
- 13:23Speaker 1: What'd you do?
- 13:24Speaker 3: So much fun.
- 13:25Speaker 4: I mean, you know, um, yeah, just sent me a synopsis,
- 13:29Speaker 4: like here's a breakdown of what the scene is and, um,
- 13:33Speaker 4: let's just go. And so just get in there, roll
- 13:36Speaker 4: your sleeves up and start mixing it up and figuring
- 13:40Speaker 4: out what everybody's going to do and everybody's going to say,
- 13:42Speaker 4: and just kind of mold the scene together and, um,
- 13:45Speaker 4: and then just have a blast. I mean, Um, Larry's
- 13:48Speaker 4: so funny and, uh, I, you know, I love, I just,
- 13:52Speaker 4: I love comedy. I love, uh, going to work and
- 13:54Speaker 4: just trying to.
- 13:55Speaker 3: Make everybody break.
- 13:57Speaker 1: What was the scenario in character?
- 13:59Speaker 4: Uh, so the scenario is that, um, so Larry goes
- 14:02Speaker 4: backwards in time and relives like great moments in American history.
- 14:06Speaker 4: And of course there's, um, you know, the, the day
- 14:08Speaker 4: after the bombing of, um, of Japan, uh, there was the, uh,
- 14:14Speaker 4: that famous picture in, in time square of the, The sailor.
- 14:18Speaker 3: Kissing the nurse. Yeah, of course.
- 14:21Speaker 4: So Larry finds himself in Times Square at that exact
- 14:24Speaker 4: moment in history.
- 14:25Speaker 3: And he's like, oh, everybody's kissing.
- 14:27Speaker 4: Oh, man.
- 14:27Speaker 3: And he goes to grab a nurse.
- 14:29Speaker 4: And she shoves him and starts screaming for her boyfriend,
- 14:32Speaker 4: who's a sailor, Johnny, who's me.
- 14:35Speaker 3: And so I show up. And I'm, you know, and so.
- 14:39Speaker 3: That's great. I'm going to go get Larry off of
- 14:41Speaker 3: my girl.
- 14:43Speaker 1: That's great, man. And you've officially moved to Pittsburgh, right?
- 14:48Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
- 14:48Speaker 1: Hometown right there. And how are you liking going back?
- 14:52Speaker 3: It's the best. I love it, man. It's there's not
- 14:54Speaker 3: one second that goes by that. I mean, the leaves
- 14:56Speaker 3: are changing outside my my office window here.
- 15:00Speaker 4: And, you know, last night we were out in the
- 15:03Speaker 4: neighborhood just hanging out with the neighbors.
- 15:04Speaker 3: All of us had our dogs and we just got
- 15:06Speaker 3: together and we're talking, you know, and yeah. Talking about
- 15:10Speaker 3: Metallica at the Sphere. Oh, I know.
- 15:12Speaker 2: My daughter does that because my daughter plays the drums now.
- 15:14Speaker 2: And she loves Metallica. She's on me about getting tickets
- 15:17Speaker 2: to go see the show.
- 15:18Speaker 3: So we're trying.
- 15:18Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. You got to do it. But yeah, no,
- 15:21Speaker 4: it's the best, man. I grew up in one of
- 15:23Speaker 4: the best neighborhoods in the world. And it's just... It's like.
- 15:28Speaker 3: I don't know. It just feels... It's like paradise, man.
- 15:32Speaker 3: It's so nice here. It's so nice.
- 15:34Speaker 1: They're around real people.
- 15:36Speaker 3: I like it. Real people, yeah.
- 15:38Speaker 1: My wife's obviously from there. We've talked about that.
- 15:40Speaker 2: And anytime we have friends or family that are from
- 15:45Speaker 2: Pittsburgh coming over, they know they have to bring Sarah's chocolate.
- 15:49Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 15:49Speaker 2: Dude.
- 15:50Speaker 1: Next level.
- 15:51Speaker 4: Do you get the chocolate covered pretzels?
- 15:53Speaker 3: Oh, the pretzels, yes.
- 15:55Speaker 1: I like the dark chocolate.
- 15:56Speaker 2: I got a section in my fridge that everyone knows
- 16:00Speaker 2: not to mess with because that's my dark Sarah's chocolate.
- 16:03Speaker 1: And my wife's got the milk chocolate, so we don't.
- 16:06Speaker 3: That's it. When you come to town. We'll all go
- 16:10Speaker 3: over to Sarah's Chocolate Factory.
- 16:12Speaker 4: They have ice cream sundaes you can go get.
- 16:14Speaker 3: Ooh, that sounds good. The Pages truck is closed for
- 16:16Speaker 3: the summer. Okay.
- 16:17Speaker 4: We got to go to Cannonsburg to go to Sarah's
- 16:19Speaker 4: for ice cream sundaes.
- 16:20Speaker 1: Okay, deal.
- 16:21Speaker 3: Deal. We'll get you out.
- 16:22Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I love that, man.
- 16:24Speaker 2: Well, listen, everyone, be sure to pick up a copy
- 16:27Speaker 2: of Joe's new book, Bloodlines. It sounds just powerful, and
- 16:31Speaker 2: it could help a lot of people out there dealing
- 16:33Speaker 2: with similar illnesses as well. Hey, Joe, thanks for taking
- 16:37Speaker 2: the time, man. Nice catching up.
- 16:39Speaker 3: Thanks, buddy, man. Good to see you. Hopefully, I'll see
- 16:42Speaker 3: you soon.
- 16:42Speaker 1: Hopefully, we'll see you in the 412.
- 16:44Speaker 3: Yeah, man. All right, brother, take care. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
- 16:47Speaker 1: On with Mario Lopez.