Here's the interview: http://www.vanidades.com/celebs/15/08/10/entrevista-joe-manganiello/
For someone with Armenian roots, is this year very special?
Yes, on April 24 it was a special day because it is the anniversary of the genocide in 1915 (when the Turkish government deported and exterminated millions of Armenians). My great-grandmother escaped the same year when they murdered her entire family.
How did she escape?
She swam across the Euphrates with her last baby in the back. But when she got across the river, she saw that the baby had drowned. She ended up living in a cave until German soldiers found and one of got her pregnant. They went to Germany where she had a Armenian-German baby. This was my grandmother. She lived on the streets of Constantinople for three years until she gathered enough money to go to the United States, where she eventually married. That's the story of my great-grandmother and grandmother.
Why do you think that Hollywood does not take too seriously the Armenian genocide? In a recent interview with Russell Crowe, he became angry when another reporter asked him why he had ignored the genocide in the film The Water Diviner, talking about that period in Turkey.
I guess it's a difficult issue ... There is a book that I think was written in 1938, The 40 Days of Musa Dagh, and MGM were about to make a film about this tragedy, but Turkey threatened the US government with a boycott of American products if the filming. They had to cancel the production. While they want to hide it all under the carpet, but it is absurd to say that something like this never happened, because I know what my family lived. My relatives were killed and disappeared. Hitler went on to say something like that nothing happened to the Turks, no one was punished. And that lack of punishment was also prompted him to commit another genocide. So I think it's important to recognize when something like this happens, to make sure it does not recur again.
Would you like to make a film with this subject?
Yes, I thought of telling the story of my grandmother and now I have a producer I've talked to some important writers to work on that project. I'm sure he'll get a similar story to the cinema in the future. There was a film, Ararat, over 10 years ago, but no one has told the story in depth.
In case you're wondering, I'm female.
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