In an interview with Out Magazine, True Blood star Joe Manganiello talks about the television series, his character Alcide, and his latest film “Magic Mike.”
Manganiello marked his territory in the public consciousness as the werewolf Alcide on HBO’s soft-core Goth horror soap, True Blood. With his brooding romance-novel looks, he became an instant sex symbol when he debuted in 2010 (he has since signed on for five more seasons). The fact that he sheds his clothes to transform into lupine form doesn’t hurt matters. Manganiello views this as pragmatism rather than an extension of creator Alan Ball’s gay sensibility. “As far as the butt cheek stuff goes,” he says, “it just makes sense. It’s not gratuitous; it’s realistic. If you’re a werewolf and you transform, you lose everything and there are your butt cheeks. The show is a deconstruction of supernatural creatures. It’s not like other werewolf projects, where you magically reappear with tiny jean shorts on.”
With Magic Mike, Manganiello will wear less material than those aforementioned Daisy Dukes. Slated for a June release, the film is based upon costar Channing Tatum‘s pre-Hollywood career as a Tampa, Fla., erotic dancer (Tatum also co-produced the film). Rounding out the cast are warhorse stallion Matthew McConaughey and It-boy hunks du jour Alex Pettyfer and Matt Bomer.
Manganiello plays Big Dick Richie. He demurs when asked if he stuffed his G-string to fill out the challenging sobriquet. “Um, I’ll let everybody see the movie and they can decide,” he says sheepishly. He insists that no waxing was involved, however. “I don’t have any body hair,” he explains. “It stops at my neck. I’m part Sicilian and Armenian.”
The strippers in Magic Mike are more the types that shake it Chippendales-style for bachelorettes than gyrating go-go boys at your local gay watering hole. “This is Chan’s experience,” Manganiello says of the homoerotic, yet hetero-themed, flick.
Manganiello interviewed a former male stripper to research the era. “All the guys he worked with were dead or in rehab,” he says, “but it was the time of his life — this insanely destructive lifestyle, this club life. It was sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll… and getting paid to take your clothes off and have sex.”
Manganiello promises Magic Mike will incorporate all of the complexities of the grind. “There are a lot of drugs, the overdosing, the depraved lifestyle,” he says. “But on the other side, it’s hilarious.”
True Blood was Manganiello’s big break, but after his first season, he was broke. He spent all of his earnings on a personal trainer (the same one who whipped Hugh Jackman into Wolverine shape) to transform him into an athletic dynamo.
“I like working hard,” he says. “It’s my letter of gratitude to Alan Ball for giving me this opportunity. Vampires are animated corpses. They can get away with not looking like they go to a gym. I’m a wild animal — that’s how I should look.”
Read more of the interview here and check out the photos below.
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