Julie Bowen is hyping up her Modern Family costar Sofia Vergara after her split from Joe Manganiello.
“This is what single and 🔥 looks like!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️,” Bowen, 53, commented on a series of Monday, July 17, Instagram photos of Vergara, 51, in a formfitting one-piece bathing suit. Vergara captioned the snaps from her trip to Italy: “Last days of vacay! Even when u r so hot I love u Ravello!!! 😁😁.”
Hours after Vergara shared the vacation pics, she and Manganiello, 46 — who tied the knot in November 2015 — announced they’d made the “difficult decision to divorce.” The exes shared the update in a joint statement to Page Six. “As two people that love and care for one another very much, we politely ask for respect of our privacy at this time as we navigate this new phase of our lives,” the statement read.
Bowen, for her part, previously said that Manganiello was “like a caveman” with Vergara when discussing the pair’s passionate dynamic in September 2015. “It’s sexy! I love it. She’s so strong and so [used to] calling the shots all the time, and then you see them together and there’s a part of her that kind of melts,” the Mixtape actress exclusively told Us Weekly at the time. “It just warms your heart when you see that, because it’s not all the time that you can tell that there’s an aspect to this relationship that’s very — how shall we say? — primal.”
Despite Vergara and Manganiello packing on the PDA at several red carpet events over the years, fans began to speculate that the duo’s marriage was on the rocks nearly a year before they announced their split.
In August 2022, Vergara brought her son, Manolo, 31 — whom she shares with ex-husband Joe Gonzalez — as her date to Sarah Hyland and Wells Adams‘ wedding. Although Us confirmed that Manganiello skipped the event due to his “work schedule,” many fans thought his absence was a sign of marital troubles.
More recently, social media users pointed out that Manganiello’s birthday tribute to Vergara earlier this month seemed noticeably short. “¡¡¡Feliz Cumpleaños Sofía!!!” the Magic Mike’s Last Dance actor captioned a throwback photo of the duo at the time.
One Instagram user commented that something seemed “off” about the post. “Cold message for her and has two stories about his dog’s birthday. And sofia has not even said thank you,” the commenter wrote.
Another fan chimed in: “Am I the only one who doesn’t like the way it sounds? ‘Sofia’ … not even ‘My love, My beloved wife.’”
Two days before the estranged couple announced their breakup, Vergara shared a series of Instagram photos of her enjoying dinner with a friend. “When life gives u lemons u come to Italy to squeeze them😚❤️☀️🇮🇹,” she captioned the Saturday, July 15, post.
One Instagram user interpreted the bittersweet caption as proof of trouble in paradise, commenting, “Yep marriage is over.”
Prior to meeting Manganiello, Vergara was engaged to Nick Loeb from 2012 to 2014. After the exes’ split, Loeb, 47, filed a lawsuit for custody of two fertilized embryos produced via in vitro fertilization when the duo were still together. Although he later dropped the original suit, the businessman filed a right-to-life lawsuit over the embryos in Louisiana in December 2016. In a 2015 op-ed for The New York Times, Loeb claimed that keeping the embryos frozen in a cryopreservation clinic “is tantamount to killing them.”
A Louisiana judge dismissed the case in August 2017, stating that the court had no jurisdiction over the embryos, which were conceived in California.
