When the highly anticipated Justice League: The Snyder Cut drops on March 18th on HBO Max, there are going to be a litany of familiar faces portraying even more familiar names from the DC Universe. Not only is Jared Leto inhabiting The Joker once again, but Ryan Choi will be portraying The Atom & Ray Porter’s villainous Darkseid will both be joining the impressive cast. Speaking of impressive, the smoldering Joe Manganiello did have a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in the post-credits scene during the first big screen foray for Justice League in 2017. It now looks like Mangaliello is going to be bringing back the character of Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson in a larger role in Justice League: The Snyder Cut.
Whether he is ripping his shirt off in the middle of a convenience store (Magic Mike XXL) as ‘Big Dick Richie’ or roaring through Bon Temps, Louisiana as the scarily stunning werewolf Alcide Herveaux, the majority of Mangaiello’s films have consistently had the rapt attention of the LGBT community. Recently, Manganiello showed some love for his hometown of Pittsburgh with the documentary Pittsburgh Is Home: The Story Of The Penguins, which documented the first fifty years of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team. Manganiello was rewarded with an Emmy Award for the project in 2017 (Manganiello served as narrator on the film). Manganiello’s movie star good looks have even caught the eye of legendary drag queen and multimedia maven Sherry Vine, who recorded a hilarious Nicki Minaj spoof several years ago titled ‘These Lips’ which was an homage to Joe Manganiello (you can check it out here).
Speaking of other projects, portraying Deathstroke is not Manganiello’s initial entrance into the DC Comics world. In early 2011, Manganiello was asked to come in and screen test for the lead role of Superman in Man of Steel. Unfortunately, scheduling problems with his True Blood schedule prevented him from moving forward and he was forced out of the running. He told Access Hollywood at the time “They wanted me to screen test and they actually asked for my measurements for the suit and everything… their shoot date switched and it would have taken up 11 weeks out of my ‘True Blood’ schedule. At the end of the day, we couldn’t get the schedule to work… so, regrettably, I never got to screen test, I never got to put the suit on.”
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