Actor Jonathan Majors assault trial begins with a debate: Was he an abuser or a victim?

NEW YORK – Jonathan Majors, an actor whom Marvel had expected to anchor its tentpole superhero franchise, manipulated, threatened and finally assaulted his former girlfriend inside a for-hire car in Manhattan, prosecutors said on Dec 4.

Majors’ lawyer Priya Chaudhry argued that it was her client who was assaulted in the March incident and that it was he who had emerged from the car bloody and hurt.

She said Majors’ former girlfriend, Ms Grace Jabbari, had accused him as revenge for ending their relationship.

The duelling accounts were presented to six jurors during opening arguments in an unusual trial in Manhattan, where the district attorney’s office has charged Majors, 34, with misdemeanour assault.

Trials on misdemeanour charges are rare, because a vast majority of defendants plead guilty to avoid risking harsher sentences.

Majors, who had received an Emmy nomination for his role in the series Lovecraft Country (2020), was on a fast rise to A-list stardom. But the charges have halted his speedy ascent and left him struggling to salvage his career and reputation.

Prosector Michael Perez said in his opening statement that Majors had attacked Ms Jabbari during a ride home in the early hours of March 25 after she saw on his phone a text from another woman.

He slapped her face and grabbed her hand violently, Mr Perez said, adding that the driver would testify that after she got out of the car, Majors threw her “like a football” back inside.

Throughout their relationship, Majors had shown a need to maintain control, Mr Perez told jurors, and in March, he had shown “no hesitation” in using physical force against Ms Jabbari.

The altercation resulted in a fracture of Ms Jabbari’s middle finger on her right hand, as well as pain and swelling in her arm and right ear, Mr Perez said.

He cast the assault as the natural finale of a relationship that became abusive shortly after it began, two years before the assault.

He said the couple met in 2021 on the set of Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania (2023), in which Majors played the time-travelling villain Kang the Conqueror, and that they experienced a short-lived “honeymoon phase”.

“Just months into the relationship, the evidence will show that the defendant’s true self emerged,” Mr Perez said, telling jurors that Majors would yell at Ms Jabbari and, during one argument, had thrown household items at the wall, shattering glass.

Majors, wearing a dark suit with a gilded Bible and a large binder on the table before him, spent much of Mr Perez’s argument facing the front of the courtroom, his face blank, while a jury of three men and three women listened impassively.

Ms Chaudhry, in her opening, echoed the prosecution in saying that the altercation had begun when Majors received a text. But she said her client had been the victim.

He was, she said, “slapped, clawed and scratched by Grace Jabbari in a way that made the driver, the only witness to this event, describe Jabbari as ‘psycho girl’.”

As Majors left to spend the night in a hotel – texting Ms Jabbari to end their relationship – Ms Jabbari went out dancing with people she had met that night, Ms Chaudhry told the jurors.

Videos show Ms Jabbari letting people “twirl her ballroom-style, while she spins on the very finger she now claims was freshly broken”, Ms Chaudhry said.

She concluded by accusing Ms Jabbari of seeking revenge for a shattered relationship.

“She made these false allegations to ruin Jonathan Majors and to take away everything he has spent his whole life working for,” Ms Chaudhry said.

Majors filed his own complaint against Ms Jabbari, and in November, she was arrested and charged with misdemeanour assault and criminal mischief.

The district attorney’s office declined to pursue the case, saying in a statement that it lacked “prosecutorial merit”.

During pre-trial hearings, prosecutors asked the judge to stop the defence from mentioning Ms Jabbari’s arrest. But Ms Chaudhry argued that the case’s dismissal showed they had ignored Majors’ perspective.

Judge Michael Gaffey ultimately agreed to allow her to discuss Ms Jabbari’s arrest, but called the situation “very unusual”, noting that Ms Chaudhry had not filed a police report until three months after the altercation.

On Dec 4, Mr Perez cast the police report as an extension of Majors’ attempts to control and manipulate Ms Jabbari.

Before the proceedings, Majors greeted several rows of supporters, leaning down and kissing at least six people. Several of Ms Jabbari’s relatives were also present, though Ms Jabbari herself, who is expected to testify, was not. NYTIMES