Joe Manganiello’s deep love of Dungeons & Dragons will make you crush on him even harder

It’s no secret that we have a big-time crush on Joe Manganiello. We know, Sofia Vergara, he’s all yours, and we lovvvve you two together. But now, for all you fellow fans of Vergara’s heartthrob, Joe Manganiello’s deep love of Dungeons & Dragons will make you crush on him even harder. We know — how is that even possible?! We learned the news from The Hollywood Reporter, and it’s making us want to go play D&D rn! I guess we shouldn’t be ~too~ surprised. In the past, we heard that Manganiello cowrote a Dungeons & Dragons screenplay (!). Swoooon.

Aside from being the captain of his high school football, volleyball, and basketball teams, Manganiello was also the captain of Dungeons & Dragons, so to speak.

He started playing it when he was 10 (!), he told THR. It makes perfect sense, then, that he and Deborah Ann Woll, his co-star from True Blood, are together again for Force Grey: Lost City of Omu, a Dungeons & Dragons quest played live on the D&D Twitch channel on Mondays at 5 p.m. PT — and it starts this Monday, July 31st.

It’s set within the new Tomb of Annihilation storyline, and the voices of Brian Posehn, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Dylan Sprouse are in the game, too, according to the Dungeons & Dragons website. As for the Dungeon Master, Matt Mercer is back to play the role.

But back to Manganiello and his love for D&D.

Growing up, “I wound up spending every summer on an island in Maine and the kids on that island were avid role-playing gamers, he told THR. “Every summer was spent creatively cooking up adventures the way a modern-day showrunner or producer would. Which is what I do now. It was building characters and story arcs and auxiliary storylines. Little did I know I was flexing all the muscles that I ended up using in my chosen profession.

We’ll say! ?

And who plays D&D, according to Manganiello?

“All the kids I played with growing up were athletes like me, he told THR. “Everyone who plays these games is an intellectual. But they came in all shapes and sizes, including my jock friends. I play regularly now with my trainer, who is the current world champion in CrossFit over 45 years old.

We’re sure you know die-hard D&D fans just like we do, if you’re not already one yourself!

The last few years, though, I’ve gotten heavily back into Dungeons & Dragons with the release of the fifth edition, Manganiello told THR. “The character I play now and in Force Grey is a dragon-born oath-breaker paladin who worships the five-headed dragon goddess Tiamat. His powers derive from the Queen of Darkness. Red skin, breathes fire, big nasty battle ax. He’s really fun to play.

We can imagine! Though Manganiello was always the gamemaster, as he told THR, we look forward to seeing him in his role in Force Grey: Lost City of Omu on the official D&D Twitch channel. As a reminder, it’s on ~tomorrow~, July 31st at 5 p.m. PT. We can’t wait!