Joe Manganiello Thinks Tom Cruise Screwed Him Out of Being Amazon's Reacher

Before we begin, there’s nothing I love more than searching for a celebrity photo and getting a jump scare in the results. So, today, I’m sharing that experience with you because, yes, that is exactly who you think it is next to Joe Manganiello. We have fun.

Moving on, Manganiello is promoting his memoir, which requires doling out a daily trickle of juicy stories to make headlines. (See also: Douglas, Michael) Manganiello’s ex-wife, Sofía Vergara, has already called him a narcissist, and we’re barely halfway through the press tour, so things are going great.

However, you can’t rest on your laurels with these things, which is how Page Six got their hands on an exclusive excerpt where Manganiello claims he was supposed to be TV’s Reacher until that pesky Tom Cruise got involved. He’s always lurking underneath thimbles and such. You never where he’s gonna pop up.

In “Bloodlines,” Manganiello writes that in January 2020, he met with Don Granger, an exec at Skydance Media, which produced the Reacher films and the shows. “We talked for an hour and a half,” Manganiello writes, discussing “the backlash over Tom’s size.” In the books, Reacher is an imposing 6-foot-5, and Cruise is famously a diminutive 5-foot-7. Manganiello says Granger told him, “You are the closest thing to Jack Reacher that I’ve ever met in my entire life . . . You look like Reacher is described in the books . . . You have his effortless intelligence.”

The “Magic Mike” star then allegedly impressed showrunner Nick Santora so much that he began writing the rest of the season with Manganiello in mind. He claims Skydance owner David Ellison and author Child were also “thrilled with my performance.”

According to Manganiello, the situation rapidly deteriorated when his casting was proposed to then-Amazon Studios head Jen Salke, who was reportedly not on board. She “felt that she was being railroaded into a final decision made by a group of primarily male producers that she didn’t feel part of,” Manganiello wrote.

Just like that, Manganiello was off Reacher, and Alan Ritchson punched his way into our hearts. So, what went wrong? Well, Manganiello’s team became convinced that Cruise “vetoed my being cast on account of Sofía.” Why would Tom do that? Because Cruise “allegedly dated Vergara” — Page Six’s own words — back in 2005.

For starters, Tom Cruise doesn’t date anyone hence even Page Six couching all of that in legalese. What Tom Cruise does do is employ a team of people who acts like he has female love interests and arranges for him to occasionally be photographed with said interests. That’s about the long and short of it. Mostly short. His “relationship” with Vergara barely even met that threshold, and it should be noted, this was during the time when the Church of Scientology was “auditioning” girlfriends for him. Could Tom Cruise still be holding a grudge after being rejected by her? Maybe? But, again, that would involve him caring about mortal concerns like dating, which I assure you, Space Jesus does not.

But, wait, there’s more! Blaming Sofía Vergara’s old flames for things is apparently a recurring theme. In this case, Nick Loeb is the notorious d*ckbag who sparked the gross and very public legal battle over Vergara’s frozen eggs, but even I don’t think he was the source of Manganiello’s health problems.

Via Entertainment Weekly:

That was when the shaman shared their diagnosis. “Someone from your past is still in love with you. He put a voodoo curse on your husband. He did it in New Orleans,” he told the couple. “Your husband needs to be cleansed and protected. I can do this. I can help him. But I need to see him for two days, and I cannot come to the United States. Can he meet me somewhere else? I could meet him in Ecuador.”

Manganiello was bewildered by the reveal. “I looked at Sofía, trying to comprehend how the f—- this guy could possibly know any of this,” he wrote. “None of this had been mentioned in the press. No one knew.”

Loeb sucks, for sure, but being a crappy ex doesn’t grant you access to voodoo magic. If it did, I’d be the godd*mn Sorcerer Supreme. There would be signs.