Joe Manganiello, one of the stars of HBO‘s True Blood who will be seen later this year in the male stripper film Magic Mike, is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Out magazine. For his coverstory interview, Joe talks about some of the prep he did for Magic Mike as well as some other interesting little tidbits about him. As you might expect, the accompanying photospread is pretty hawt. Click below to see Joey Man on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Out and read some excerpts from his coverstory interview.

Manganiello marked his territory in the public consciousness as the werewolf Alcide on HBO’s soft-core Goth horror soap, True Blood. With his brooding romance-novel looks, he became an instant sex symbol when he debuted in 2010 (he has since signed on for five more seasons). The fact that he sheds his clothes to transform into lupine form doesn’t hurt matters. Manganiello views this as pragmatism rather than an extension of creator Alan Ball’s gay sensibility. “As far as the butt cheek stuff goes,” he says, “it just makes sense. It’s not gratuitous; it’s realistic. If you’re a werewolf and you transform, you lose everything and there are your butt cheeks. The show is a deconstruction of supernatural creatures. It’s not like other werewolf projects, where you magically reappear with tiny jean shorts on.” With Magic Mike, Manganiello will wear less material than those aforementioned Daisy Dukes. Slated for a June release, the film is based upon costar Channing Tatum’s pre-Hollywood career as a Tampa, Fla., erotic dancer (Tatum also co-produced the film). Rounding out the cast are warhorse stallion Matthew McConaughey and It-boy hunks du jour Alex Pettyfer and Matt Bomer. Manganiello plays Big Dick Richie. He demurs when asked if he stuffed his G-string to fill out the challenging sobriquet. “Um, I’ll let everybody see the movie and they can decide,” he says sheepishly. He insists that no waxing was involved, however. “I don’t have any body hair,” he explains. “It stops at my neck. I’m part Sicilian and Armenian.” The strippers in Magic Mike are more the types that shake it Chippendales-style for bachelorettes than gyrating go-go boys at your local gay watering hole. “This is Chan’s experience,” Manganiello says of the homoerotic, yet hetero-themed, flick. Manganiello interviewed a former male stripper to research the era. “All the guys he worked with were dead or in rehab,” he says, “but it was the time of his life — this insanely destructive lifestyle, this club life. It was sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll… and getting paid to take your clothes off and have sex.” Manganiello promises Magic Mike will incorporate all of the complexities of the grind. “There are a lot of drugs, the overdosing, the depraved lifestyle,” he says. “But on the other side, it’s hilarious.”

Oh yeah, Magic Mike is one of THE films on my Must See list for 2012 so … hilarious or not, I’ll be there. If you want to read the full online version of Joe‘s Out magazine interview, you can do so HERE. I’ve yet to have the pleasure of meeting the man but everything I’ve heard about him makes me believe that he is just a really sweet, nice guy. I love him in True Blood, I bet I’ll love him in Magic Mike. Altho I know that there won’t be any full frontal anything in Magic Mike (damn) I’m still very much looking forward to whatever the film will show … I’m quite certain we, as an audience, will be very entertained … don’t you?

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