Joe Manganiello talks about his experience.

“Magic Mike” actor Joe Manganiello denied that he divorced Sofia Vergara because he wanted children and she did not.

“That's simply not true,” Manganiello told Men's Journal in a new cover interview.

“We tried to have a family for the first year and a half. And we had a big conversation right away within the first month that we dated.”

“I said, 'If you've decided not to have kids, I understand. Just tell me and I'll understand what you mean,' and I said, 'That's okay. But that wasn't the case with her. And I promised her that if it didn't work out, I would never leave her. And I didn't.”

Vergara had previously placed the issue of children at the center of their separation, but Manganiello insisted that “the reason everything ended up the way it did was not inevitably because they grew apart, and sometimes that happens.”

Vergara also said that “the child was the reason why they were separated.

To further explain why he decided to tell his side of the story, Manganiello said, “They portrayed me as if I was in some sort of mid-life crisis, and after nine years, they gave me an ultimatum to someone, 'Do something that could be unhealthy for your body or I'm gone. I confronted him. I was not that kind of person.”

Speaking to the Spanish newspaper El País in January, Vergara said, “My marriage broke up because my husband was young.

She continued, “I feel it's unfair to the baby. I respect whoever does it, but it's just not for me anymore.”

Manganiello and Vergara were married in 2015 and announced their separation in July 2023.

“We have made the difficult decision to divorce,” they wrote in a statement to Page Six. As two people who love and care for each other very much, we respectfully ask that you respect our privacy as we navigate this new phase of our lives.”

The former couple had no children together, but Vergara is the mother of a son, Manolo, 32, from a previous relationship.