Sofía Vergara responds to ex Joe Manganiello denying they divorced over disagreement on having kids
Sofía Vergara is responding to her ex-husband Joe Manganiello denying they divorced over differing views on having children.
Vergara, who has an adult son from her first marriage, said in an interview earlier this year that she and Manganiello, who is five years her junior, parted ways because he wanted kids.
But Manganiello told Men’s Journal last month that his ex-wife’s explanation is “simply not true.”
“At the end of the day, you never even know if that’s what he said for real,” Vergara told Variety on Wednesday.
“I’ve read a lot of things that I’ve said that I’m like, ‘Huh?’ What am I gonna do, call him? I don’t know if he even said that.”
Page Six revealed in July 2023 that the pair were divorcing after seven years of marriage; their split was finalized in February.
Since then, the actress, 52, has found happiness thanks in part to her go-to mantra: “Don’t think too much.”
“When you sit too much with your thoughts, that’s when people get depressed and people get paralyzed,” she shared with Variety. “I always keep active. What the f–k can we do? Nothing. We have to keep living.”
Vergara told El País in January that her “marriage broke up because [her] husband was younger; he wanted to have kids, and [she] didn’t want to be an old mom.”
“I feel it’s not fair to the baby,” she explained at the time.
The “Modern Family” star made sure to note that although she “respect[s]” those who wish to welcome children later in life, the path is just “not for [her] anymore.”
“I had a son at 19, who is now 32, and I’m ready to be a grandmother, not a mother,” she said of Manolo Gonzalez Vergara, whose father is Joe Gonzalez.
“I’m almost in menopause; it’s the natural way of things. … When my son becomes a dad, let him bring the baby to me for a while and then I’ll give it back to him and go on with my life; that’s what I have to do.”
Several months later, Manganiello shut down the remarks, arguing, “[That] wasn’t inevitably why everything ended. It’s because two people grew apart, and sometimes that happens.”
“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,” he insisted, admitting that he was frustrated by that narrative.
According to the actor, 47, he and Sofía “did try to have a family for the first year and a half.”
In fact, he claimed they even “had a huge conversation right out of the gate during the first month [they] dated.”
“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,'” he recalled. “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.”
