Joe Manganiello has shared a close look at the three-foot dragon tattoo covering his surgical scars. He described the sprawling design as his first tattoo.
The 49-year-old True Blood actor posted the photographs on Instagram on Monday, October 19. He wrote that getting the artwork was an effort to “take back what little agency I felt that I had.”
Manganiello has been discussing a seven-year health battle that doctors never conclusively diagnosed. He has described the condition as autoimmune.
His post referenced “Enter the Dragon,” the fourth chapter of his memoir, Bloodlines. The book was published October 13 by Avid Reader Press.
He Chose an Eastern Dragon to Represent Himself
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The carousel follows the tattoo from black outlines to a completed design shaded in red and orange, as Entertainment Weekly reported. The dragon’s head sits below his belly button, its body curling across his right hip and thigh before the tail ends just above his knee.
In his caption, Manganiello described imagining his body sending knights to fight a Western dragon that didn’t exist. Unable to find an enemy, those soldiers instead damaged his own body. He chose an Eastern dragon for the tattoo and imagined it telling his body to stop the attack, explaining that “the (eastern) dragon was me.”
He has since added other tattoos. In February 2024, HOLA! documented a separate dragon design extending across his arm, shoulder and chest, along with Armenian lettering on his forearm.
Emergency Surgery Left Him With an Ostomy Bag for Seven Months
Manganiello’s account to PEOPLE included fevers, blistering rashes, headaches and exhaustion, along with abdominal pain that sometimes made walking difficult. He underwent repeated colonoscopies as doctors searched for a cause. In a memoir excerpt published by the magazine, he recalled being about two weeks into a 2016 hospitalization when pain and bleeding left him afraid he wouldn’t survive the night. Doctors operated the following morning.
He wrote that surgeons found his large intestine severely damaged and close to rupturing. They removed the entire organ during a ten-hour operation and diverted his digestive tract through an opening in his abdomen. He woke up with an ostomy bag and the possibility that he might need it permanently. He told KDKA on October 16 that he wore the bag for seven months. A later operation reconnected his remaining digestive tract.
Manganiello shared photographs of that hospital stay and subsequent procedures on October 15. As Wealth of Geeks previously reported, he said he lost 60 pounds in the two weeks after the intestinal surgery.
He Says His Symptoms Subsided More Than Three Years Ago
Manganiello told Entertainment Weekly in an October 13 interview that his symptoms had unexpectedly subsided more than three years earlier. He acknowledged lasting effects from the procedures but said everyday life had become manageable. He has also told PEOPLE that he is off medication.
Preparing the memoir required him to revisit experiences he had concealed from much of the public. He said keeping his illness private had made ordinary conversations, including exchanges on set, feel false because he couldn’t be forthcoming about what he was living through.
His editor questioned whether he wanted to retain some of the book’s graphic medical descriptions. Manganiello chose to keep them because he wanted readers to understand the suffering behind his account, particularly those going through difficult experiences themselves.
Recording the audiobook meant reading those passages aloud. He said that process could make him feel as though he were back in the moments he was describing. Asked whether revisiting the ordeal had been therapeutic, his answer was blunt: “No, not at all.”