This news is steadily killing me. It’s not that I actively dislike Joe Manganiello. He reminds me a lot of the dudes at my gym, and I can certainly appreciate a nice set of muscles and a well-toned booty. Yet there has to be more going on to hold my interest, and Joe doesn’t seem to have more than one dimension (or three where his ass is concerned). Joe is a would-be stud muffin who appears in Men’s magazines while alternately declaring a return of “The Man” and claiming to catch falling refrigerators in mid-air. Because you know, men have been missing from this Earth for quite some time, and refrigerators fall from the sky on a regular basis.
Anyway, I played along with Joe’s game during the promotion for Magic Mike because that was a kinder, gentler time when muscle-bound types weren’t terribly appreciated in the Hollywood cycle. The prospect of several male bums on display in Magic Mike was pretty exciting. Of course, Joe is best known for his role as a bare-bummed werewolf in HBO’s “True Blood.” In the aftermath of Magic Mike, Joe went back to his usual, gym-bound existence and wrote a bodybuilding book. Now he wants us all to know that he’s not just a pretty chest. In fact, he’s playing the role of Stanley Kowalski in a Yale production of A Streetcar Named Desire; this is the lead role that was once embodied by Marlon Brando. Bloody hell:
Joe Manganiello says while he loves playing a werewolf on HBO’s “True Blood,” the classically trained actor tells The Post’s Alexa, out tomorrow, “Sometimes all I’m being asked to do is rip my shirt off and growl.” From Sept. 20 to Oct. 12, he’ll star in the Yale Repertory production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He added, “I’m excited to get back into these intense theater roles and get wild, get raw. Running shirtless in the woods pays the bills, but it’s only a sliver of what I do. I don’t want it to become what I do, or who I am.”
[From Page Six]
Well, at least this isn’t a Broadway production of the play, right? Poor Joe. The dude is forced to be pretty to pay the bills, but all he really wants to do is … act. Boy, I can’t wait for the YouTube videos of Joe yelling, “Hey Stella!”
Meow.
Photos courtesy of WENN
I do not see this going well, he’s not all that great on True Blood..
So much Man. I like. I can tune out all the bad acting as soon as the shirt is off.
Yeah, who care’s about acting? I just want to look at him!
And touch. I would touch everything.
He’s sooooo F-ing hot I can barely stand it. Who cares if he’s Oscar worthy or not.
See, I honestly really like Joe Manganiello when he’s portraying kind, gentlemanly Alcide.
But -holy crap- when the character was acting moody and violent most of this season, I couldn’t even with the guy. His, uh, limitations were incredibly apparent as he tried to show a little acting range.
And there was also this.
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18xj9ejlsbmpjjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18xj9h4c3t3w3jpg/ku-xlarge.jpg
Thank goodness he got nice again by the season finale, so now I can like him again. 🙂
He looks a lot better now that he’s cut his hair but yeah, I really cannot see him in Streetcar. All I get is a visual of him flexing all the time.
Stick to the werewolfy stuff, Joe.
*shakes head, sadly*
Ohhhh, Joe. Good luck with that.
Although, to be fair, Yale Rep isn’t for schmucks. And, if truth be told, Stanley Kowalski is a total meathead part. It’s not going to be that much of a stretch.
After watching him in True Blood, I don’t want to see him acting (whatever that means) in anything everrrrrr….
I’ve only seen him in True Blood and have not been impressed.
While the writing on that show can be pretty awful, I feel like most of the actors on it are really good and do their best to rise above the material. Can’t say that for him.
Who knows though, maybe he’ll surprise us.
I hope he does surprise us with his performance in that play. If he wants to have some variety of a career, he has to do things to show he is more than pretty face and a hot bod.
Believe it or not, he did train at Carnegie Mellon — I always give props to an actor who trained, and so few American ones do.
It’s not like any of that training helped. I’ve (unfortunately) seen most of the stuff he’s been in, and he’s been boring at best and crap at worst in all of it.
I know he trained at C-M. And up until about two years ago he wasn’t such an obvious douchebag.
But he doesn’t seem to be able to act and has become such a douchebag.
And True Blood wants to put the character of Alcide as a primary one? Not sure that’s going to work.
Brando was the best!
So unique!!
Ah. Give the guy a chance. True Blood isn’t exactly a stretch and neither was Magic Mike. Just because he’s good looking and built doesn’t mean he has only one dimension.
All of what you said.
I get hot under the collar every time i see streetcar Brando was so hot
Giiiiiirl, ME TOO. Brando in his prime was unbelievably sexy and his talent was overpowering.
I always feel like that bread has been photo-shopped in. It just doesn’t flow with his look.
Okay. I am going to say it. I was never impressed with Brando. Seen many of his movies. And never got all the hyped.
Yet, I can think of exactly two movie projects of Brando’s, that I truly enjoyed.
The Godfather and The Freshman. He was really funny and understated in The Freshman. So technically that was my favorite movie of his.
So let Joe be great. Let him do Stanley. And be great. 🙂
Just as long as he gets naked while he does it. All will be good.
Is anyone else thinking about Ned Flanders on the episode of The Simpsons where they put this on. Ned Flanders….Would you hit it?
The best part of the interview in the New York Post is where he says;
But he (Brando) saw the role very differently than I do.” He chuckles. “If you hold the play in front of you and watch him in the film, he wasn’t even close to being word perfect.”
Well, by that measure, if Joe gets all his lines right, his Stanley will be BETTER THAN BRANDO’S! (LOL)
I agree with the post that suggests this is not a stretch for him. It’s a big, brutish guy he’s playing. He usually plays those kinds of guys starting with his first role (Flash thompson in Spiderman).
It gets worse:
In real life, his posse includes the DJs Z-Trip and Dieselboy, and the artist Shepard Fairey. (Fairey designed an Alcide sticker that Manganiello gives out to fans, and a black-and-gold painting of Fairey’s hangs in Manganiello’s house.) “We get together and talk art, culture, music, almost like a salon in the Gertrude Stein or Greenwich Village tradition,” Manganiello says. “We figure out what the world needs more of and what we need less of.” He laughs.
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Oh I’m sure it’s just like a salon in the Gertrude Stein tradition. Who better than a couple of DJs, Fairey (who pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court related to his “artwork”), and Joe (an actor who can’t get a job where he can keep his shirt on) to tell us “what the world needs more of and what we need less of.” Who compares themselves to Gertrude Stein, anyway. I appreciate his hard-fought fame, but he really is just a big ol’ douche.