The actor is set to detail his ailment and his search for answers in his upcoming memoir, “Bloodlines.”

Joe Manganiello shares new details of ‘excruciating’ secret health battle: ‘I couldn’t stand up or walk’

The actor is set to detail his ailment and his search for answers in his upcoming memoir, "Bloodlines."

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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June 25, 2026 10:48 a.m. ET

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Joe Manganiello. Credit:

Dia Dipasupil/Getty

- Joe Manganiello is sharing new information about his private health battle.

- The *True Blood* actor said he underwent "very serious operations" that "mutilated parts of my body."

- "I spent months and months heavily medicated while dealing with excruciating bouts of chronic pain," he said.

Joe Manganiello is shedding more light on his private, years-long battle with a “deadly mystery illness.”

Following the announcement of his forthcoming memoir, *Bloodlines*, which explores his health scare and global quest for answers, the 49-year-old* **True Blood* actor took to Instagram to share harrowing new details about his undisclosed condition and the “very serious operations” that he underwent in order to stay alive.

“For the better part of the last decade, most people don’t know this but I suffered in silence battling a deadly mystery illness,” Manganiello said. “And, other than a very small circle of family and friends, I hid it from the rest of the world until recently [and] hadn’t really shared what I had gone through.”

Joe Manganiello.

Parrish Lewis/NBC via Getty

The *Deal or No Deal Island* host explained that he saw “the best doctors in the world” searching for answers, but that “none of them could explain what started my illness.”

To make matters worse, Manganiello explained that “their attempts to treat it with high-powered biologic drugs only exacerbated my symptoms and then unlocked a host of brutal side effects that wound up plaguing me for years.”

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It got so bad that he ended up going under the knife.

“And then, in attempts to buy myself time, I underwent very serious operations and procedures that mutilated parts of my body and left me so weak at times that I couldn’t stand up or walk,” he said. “I spent months and months heavily medicated while dealing with excruciating bouts of chronic pain.”

Manganiello’s upcoming book, *Bloodlines*, which is hits bookshelves on Oct. 13, details his health battle and its cause. It also expanded “my understanding of my family’s history” and led him to make “some absolutely unbelievable discoveries as I wake up to the idea that maybe what happened to me wasn’t random,” he said.

Manganiello hopes that the book will help others who are facing their own similar health struggles. “If you’re out there and you’re suffering, then there’s hope,” he said. “And hopefully you’ll get something out of it.”

A synopsis for *Bloodlines* shares that the book will follow Manganiello as he navigates “a previously undisclosed health ordeal — marked by multiple near-death experiences and medical crises — that led him beyond medicine and into a remarkable, globe-spanning quest that revealed answers about his ancestry, inherited trauma, and the deeper histories we carry.”

Manganiello writes that his health suddenly deteriorated “without warning” one day as “a cascade of autoimmune-related illnesses attacked his skin, thyroid, eyes, lungs, and digestive system,” the synopsis reads.

The mysterious ailments led to a seven-year-long health battle in which Manganiello was “plagued by chronic pain” and underwent a “life-saving organ amputation, existential crisis, and a prolonged fight for survival that left doctors with few answers and no clear explanation,” the synopsis continues.

Bloodlines drops on October 13.

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