Joe Manganiello might be the unluckiest actor working today. Despite building a solid and respectable career for himself, he’s something of the nearly man of Hollywood. He’s been on the cusp of that one major role more times than most could imagine, but it somehow never happens for him.
Manganiello achieved recognition as Flash Thompson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. While he had a few memorable exchanges with Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker in the film, Raimi’s iteration of Spidey didn’t explore the Peter-Flash dynamic beyond the fact that Flash was Peter’s bully in high school. Some fans imagined that Manganiello’s Flash could make a return in the MCU’s multiverse, possibly even as Agent Venom, but this didn’t happen, nor does it appear likely at this moment.
The actor’s next break was as Alcide Herveaux in True Blood. The show brought him renewed attention, but it also cost him what would have been the biggest role of his career to date. Due to his True Blood commitments, Manganiello lost out on the role of Superman in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.
“Zack is a big fan of True Blood,” Manganiello told Page Six. “I sat down with him for 90 minutes and met with the Warner Bros. executives. Zack wanted me to screentest and he wanted my measurements for the suit, so the True Blood costume department took my measurements and were going to make me a suit for the screentest. But filming overlapped with 11 weeks of the True Blood Season 5 schedule and the show needs me next year.”
Manganiello must have made quite the impression on Warner Bros. and DC, though, since he was cast as Deathstroke in Ben Affleck’s unmade Batman movie. As Manganiello revealed in his memoir Bloodlines (via The Hollywood Reporter), the offer arrived at a critical point in his life as he dealt with severe health issues. “It was just the carrot I needed dangled in front of me, the one that would lead me out of this nightmare that had become my life,” he wrote. “I needed to believe, even if it turned out to be a delusion, that one year from now I could handle the rigors of shooting a superhero movie for six months.”
As everybody knows now, Affleck’s Batman movie never came to fruition. Manganiello’s consolation prize? A cameo in the post-credits of Josstice League and a scene in the Knightmare sequence of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Manganiello tried to create his own luck and wrote his own screenplay for a Deathstroke origin story, but as he told ComicBook.com, “James Gunn was just like, ‘Let it go.’” Any dreams of playing Slade Wilson were over.
The rotten luck streak continued with Prime Video’s Reacher series. Yes, before Alan Ritchson grabbed his toothbrush and roughed up bad guys, Manganiello was attached to the part. Writing in Bloodlines, Manganiello revealed that he impressed all the main parties working on the Reacher show. According to Manganiello (via Page Six), Skydance executive Don Granger told him, “You are the closest thing to Jack Reacher that I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
Reportedly, showrunner Nick Santora even wrote the first season with Manganiello in mind for the lead. Internal politics caused a speed bump, but Manganiello’s people believed there was someone else who may have influenced the situation: Tom Cruise.
Not only had Cruise played Jack Reacher in two films, but he also had a history with Manganiello’s ex-wife, Sofía Vergara. According to Manganiello, “an executive producer [on the show] could have potentially come in over the top and vetoed my being cast on account of Sofía.” Whether this is true or not, only the people involved would know.
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Meanwhile, Alan Ritchson has pretty much made the role his own over the years, with Reacher Season 4 drawing more than 66 million viewers globally in its first 28 days. And audiences keep tuning in for more, with spin-offs like Neagley, which premiered September 16 and guest stars Ritchson, already getting a second season. Reacher Season 5 is currently filming in Toronto, and Prime Video has already renewed the show for Season 6.
What is certain, though, is that Joe Manganiello is due his A-list-making break. He’s good enough to get the big one, and it’s high time that he got it.
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