Joe Manganiello denies Sofía Vergara’s claims about what led to their divorce

Joe Manganiello has disputed Sofia Vergara’s claim that they divorced because he wanted children.

The True Blood actor, 47, split from the Modern Family star, 52, last July after seven years of marriage. Vergara later claimed to the Spanish newspaper El Pais they had separated because Manganiello wanted a baby and she did not, which he has denied.

Manganiello said Vergara’s claims they broke up because he wanted to be a father are “simply not true” and admitted he resented being “painted as if I had some sort of midlife crisis”.

Speaking to the Men’s Journal, Manganiello said: “There’s been a lot said in the press about me wanting a family. That’s simply not true.”

“We did try to have a family for the first year and a half,” he explained. “And we had a huge conversation right out of the gate during the first month we 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.’ But that wasn’t the case with her,” the actor continued. “And I swore to her that I would never leave if it didn’t work out. And I didn’t.”

Although Manganiello admitted he does want to have children, he specified that “wasn’t inevitably why everything ended. It’s because two people grew apart, and sometimes that happens.”

He added: “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.”

Vergara and Manganiello, who first met through Vergara’s Modern Family co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2014, announced their “difficult decision” to divorce last July in a joint statement.

Speaking to El Pais about their split ten months later, Vergara said she had already had her son, Manolo, at 19 with her first husband Joe Gonzalez and didn’t want to become a mother again when she was “almost in menopause”.

She claimed: “My marriage broke up because my husband was younger; he wanted to have kids and I didn’t want to be an old mom.”

The Griselda star added: “I respect whoever does it, but that’s not for me anymore. I had a son at 19, who is now 32, and I’m ready to be a grandmother, not a mother.”