Marvel announced that Jonathan Majors – once considered to be the future of the next phase of their extended movie universe – has been dropped by the studio after he was found guilty of harassing and assaulting his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari.
He was found guilty of two counts of harassment and assault Monday against his ex-girlfriend, while being acquitted on two other counts – but the actor has hit back, saying he still looks forward to clearing his name.
British dancer Grace Jabbari, 30, said she suffered ‘excruciating’ pain when the Marvel movie star struck her on the head and broke her finger in the back of an SUV after she saw a flirty text message from another woman on his phone this year.
For Majors, the convictions could spell up to a year behind bars – along with the ruin of his Hollywood career just as he was about to be tipped for an Oscar for his role in unreleased movie Magazine Dreams.
Majors first appeared in the role of the villainous Kang in a 2021 episode of the Disney+ series Loki before taking a main antagonist role in February’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Marvel announced that Jonathan Majors – once considered to be the future of the next phase of their extended movie universe – has been dropped by the studio after he was found guilty of harassing and assaulting his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari.
Marvel and Disney coming up with a plan in case Majors was indicted was first reported by Variety in November.
California-born Majors, 34, graduated from Yale with an acting masters, and he rose to fame after starring in the 2019 independent feature film The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
He went on to perform in HBO’s Lovecraft Country, receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, before starring as supervillain Kang the Conqueror in the Marvel Universe, and Dame Anderson in Creed III this year.
But his success on the big screen came crashing down in March when he was charged with four misdemeanors – assault with intent to cause physical injury, assault recklessly causing physical injury, aggravated harassment and harassment.
Jurors were tasked with examining conflicting narratives about whether Majors was the aggressor or the victim during the chaotic SUV struggle with Jabbari in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan on March 25.
They began deliberations on Thursday, and on Monday they reached the guilty verdict for assault recklessly causing physical injury – but not assault with intent to cause physical injury.
Majors’ lawyer Priya Chaudhry claimed the mix of guilty and not guilty verdicts meant jurors did not entirely ‘believe’ Jabbari’s account, and he still hopes to clear his name.
‘It is clear that the jury did not believe Grace Jabbari’s story of what happened in the SUV because they found that Mr. Majors did not intentionally cause any injuries to her. We are grateful for that,’ she said.
‘We are disappointed, however, that despite not believing Ms. Jabbari, the jury nevertheless found that Mr. Majors was somehow reckless while she was attacking him.
‘Mr. Majors is grateful to God, his family, his friends, and his fans for their love and support during these harrowing eight months. Mr. Majors still has faith in the process and looks forward to fully clearing his name.’
But Jabbari’s lawyer, Brittany Henderson, said ‘justice has been served’ through Monday’s verdicts.
‘We are thankful to the jury, the court, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for giving this case the time and attention that it merits,’ she said.
‘Today has shown us that no abuser, no matter how powerful they may seem, is above the law.
‘Ms. Jabbari has shown irrefutable strength and poise while being forced to relive, both in court and very publicly, the abuse she was subjected to.
‘Her unwavering resolve to see this case through to the end is borne out of a desire to show other survivors and victims of domestic violence, that they too, can hold their abuser accountable.
‘Ms. Jabbari hopes that her actions will inspire other survivors to speak out and seek justice.’
The video, shown to court, shows Jabbari and Majors scuffling on the street after a fight
In her testimony, Jabbari said that she felt ‘excruciating’ pain as Majors twisted her fingers to grab his phone back after she took it from him
Evidence shown to court reveals Jabbari’s swollen finger and marks to her neck
Pictured: A cut behind Jabbari’s ear. While the charges against Majors are only misdemeanors, the stakes for him could not be higher – and he is fighting for his reputation and his career
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg thanked Jabbari for ‘bravely telling her story’.
‘At the Manhattan D.A.’s Office, we are committed to centering survivors in all of our work,’ he said.
‘The evidence presented throughout this trial illustrated a cycle of psychological and emotional abuse, and escalating patterns of coercion far too common across the many intimate partner violence cases we see each and every day.
‘Today, a jury determined that pattern of abuse and coercion culminated with Mr. Majors assaulting and harassing his girlfriend. We thank the jury for its service and the survivor for bravely telling her story despite having to relive her trauma on the stand.’
Majors is set to be sentenced on February 6.
During the trial, surveillance footage of Majors and Jabbari repeatedly shoving and scuffling in a vehicle on March 25 was shown to the court along with videos, photos and text messages as evidence of abuse.
Their conflict came after Jabbari, from Reading, England, saw a text from a woman called Cleopatra, reading: ‘Wish I was kissing you right now’ to her then-boyfriend.
Jabbari testified that she saw on the phone that Majors had sent Cleopatra a D’Angelo song called ‘Lady’.
In closing arguments that ended before lunch on Thursday, prosecutors said Majors ‘struck a blow’ to his partner’s head that left her stunned and in ‘excruciating’ pain in the back seat of a car.
They said the assault was the latest escalation in Majors’ repeated attempts to ‘exert control’ over his girlfriend through both physical and emotional violence, citing a past instance in which he allegedly urged her not to seek medical attention for a head injury because it could ‘lead to an investigation’.
Majors playing Dame Anderson in the 2023 film Creed III
For Majors, the convictions could spell up to a year behind bars – along with the ruin of his Hollywood career just as he was about to be tipped for an Oscar for his role in unreleased movie Magazine Dreams (pictured)
Majors’ lawyers claimed that Jabbari was the aggressor and that the driver of the SUV called her ‘psycho girl’ because she was so out of control – something jurors ultimately rejected.
His attorney Priya Chaudhry said that Jabbari hit him in ‘revenge’ for discovering the text from another woman.
But in her closing statement, prosecutor Kelli Galaway dismissed the idea that it was a ‘revenge plot to ruin the defendant’s life, his career, to take everything away from him’.
She said that the case boiled down to ‘control, domination, manipulation, and abuse’ and was the culmination of two years of Majors trying to make Jabbari conform to his every whim.
In her emotional testimony, which lasted four days, Jabbari repeatedly broke down in tears as she described how Majors changed after initially being a doting boyfriend.
They met in 2021 on the set of ‘Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ while it was filming in London, and within months Majors began berating Jabbari and manipulating her, she told the jury.
She said that Majors mocked her ex-boyfriend and called him ’embarrassing’ and became so demanding when she attended the Glastonbury music festival in the UK that she came home early.
In July 2022 Jabbari was visiting Majors in Los Angeles while he was filming ‘Magazine Dreams’, his Oscar-tipped movie about a troubled bodybuilder, when tensions boiled over.
She told the jury: ‘He exploded basically.
‘It was a violent temper, full of rage and aggression. He was throwing things, shouting in my face, throwing objects. I was trying to get away from him.
‘We were in the master bedroom. It started off close to me and I left, to hide a bit and tried to use my words to calm him down’.
Majors is accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari. (Pictured with current girlfriend Meagan Good on Monday)
The conviction could spell up to a year behind bars for Majors, and the ruin of his Hollywood career just as he was about to be tipped for an Oscar for his unreleased new movie Magazine Dreams, about a troubled bodybuilder
In September last year Majors became upset again when Jabbari invited a friend back to their house in Hampstead, North London, while he was filming the TV series Loki.
Jabbari said: ‘(He said) if I don’t understand why he’s upset then I’m an idiot, I’m stupid. He started calling me an alcoholic and that I’m embarrassing’.
Jabbari walked off and Majors ‘came up behind me’, she said. She told the court: ‘He tore my headphones out of my ear and was stamping on them. He started shouting really loudly, better not be in the house when I get home. Really loudly, shouting in my face. Then he turned around and left’.
Jabbari recorded a portion of Majors ranting at her which was played to the jury.
Majors could be heard saying ‘how dare you’ and telling her to be more like Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King, and Michelle Obama.
Majors said: ‘I am a great man. a great man. I am doing great things not just for me but for my culture…for the world’.
He said he needed a ‘woman that supports me’, a ‘great woman’ who would ‘make sacrifices’.
After their fights Majors would threaten to commit suicide and would say that he had ‘put actions in place to do so’, Jabbari told the jury.
She said: ‘I said please don’t say this, I’m going to have to call for help. I said I loved him so much. What do you mean you put this into motion?
Describing the dynamic of their relationship, Jabbari said: ‘It was confusing because I felt scared of him but dependent on him. I promised him I would never tell anyone what went on’.
Addressing the assault, Jabbari said that as she rode back home on March 25 with Majors after seeing a play and having dinner, she was ‘taken aback’ by the text from another woman.
She said that he began acting like ‘he’d been caught out’ and refused to show her the phone, so she grabbed it.
Moving her shoulder to the left and pulling her hands down, she told the jury: ‘I really easily grabbed it, like he wasn’t expecting me to take it
‘I turned away from him. I was trying to see the message and I could just see his home screen.
‘I felt a heavy thud on top of me, what I knew to be the weight of him and trying to pry the phone out of my fingers but I was going into protective mode. I curled over and felt him yank my arm.
‘He was trying to pry the phone out of my hands. When that wasn’t successful he put his arm behind my back’, putting her right arm behind her back’.
Jibbari said Majors began ‘peeling’ her fingers off the phone and was ‘twisting my arm, my hand’.
(He was) trying to make me feel pain. Just felt excruciating’, she said.
‘Next I felt a really hard blow across my head’ making a swiping motion over the back right side of her head.
She tried to fend Majors off but she couldn’t. The car stopped and they both got out.
A surveillance camera captured Majors repeatedly shoving Jabbari back into the SUV then running away down the street with her in pursuit.
While there is no footage from inside the car, attorneys presented security camera footage of the moments before and after. An SUV was seen in one clip stopped in the street as Majors repeatedly pushes Jabbari back inside. He then can be seen leading her to the sidewalk by the hands and then running off – with Jabbari in pursuit
Describing what was happening, Jabbari said: ‘He was trying to make me stay in the car, trying to push me. My body felt very light in his hands so it felt just that he was forcing me to stay in his car. He was holding me with (his arms). My arms were by my body.
‘He was running away. I couldn’t work out why I followed. I wanted to hear – literally that morning we’re talking about when we’re getting married, the names of our children and he’s running away instead of saying actually I’ve had an affair. It was silence and bolting out the door…I was really heartbroken’.
Jabbari said she felt ‘sad’ and that ‘everything I knew to be true was not’.
The jury heard that she later went out partying with three strangers she met in the street and returned to Majors’ apartment in Manhattan, where he found her passed out in the closet the next day.
Photos released by the court show a gash under her right ear and severe bruising to her right middle finger.
During a brutal cross examination by Chaudhry, Jabbari asked to leave the courtroom because she became so upset at being repeatedly shown the police bodycam footage of her being found half naked in Majors’ apartment the morning after the incident.
The jury appeared uncomfortable at the repeated showing of the footage, with one juror wincing and another putting her head in her hands.
Jonathan Majors is seen in police bodycam as he was arrested in March. The clip is part of a trove of evidence that has been released during his assault trial
The actor found Jabbari slumped in the closet the day after their traffic row, called the police who came round and arrested him after speaking to Jabbari. Among the evidence released by the court were photographs of Majors and Jabbari and their injuries
A picture taken after one of the couple’s fights in LA when he allegedly threw a candle at Jabbari, July 9, 2022
Jabbari (outside court December 8) was branded a ‘liar’ by Jonathan Majors’ attorneys as his assault trial heated up this month
Chaudhry also questioned Jabbari about her drinking which she said was a ‘constant source of tension’ with Majors.
The lawyer said: ‘Your parents have complained about your drinking’, drawing an objection which led to the judge striking her question from the record.
Majors did not testify and his defense called three witnesses including NYPD detective Ronnie Mejia, who was the officer in the case of Majors’s cross-complaint against Jabbari, which he filed in June.
That led to her being arrested in October but the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to pursue the case.
During the trial race was an issue which hovered in the background and occasionally burst into the foreground.
During her opening remarks Chaudhry referred to Jabbari’s ‘fair’ skin and called Majors a ‘black man who found his girlfriend unconscious in his closet, in America, called the police for help’
During her closing statement she was even more direct and told the jury that prosecutors ‘bought her (Jabbari’s) white lies and all her pretty little lies’.
Chaudhry said: ‘If you believe Grace, then despite Jonathan Majors telling her how dangerous it is for a black man to call the police in America, despite that, he beat her badly in a car that was both in his own name and then he called 911 himself.
‘His fear of what happens when a Black man in America calls 911 came true. And now we’re here’.
As she said that Majors began dabbing his eyes as he appeared to cry, a theatrical moment that was outdone moments later when Chaudhry choked up as she addressed the jury and implored them to clear him.
In court Majors acted with unfailing politeness at all times, kissing his girlfriend Meagan Good, who was in the public gallery every day, and her mother.
Majors, who is known for being deeply religious, tucked in Chaudhry’s chair when she sat down and read the Bible that he brought with him during breaks.