On December 18, a jury found Jonathan Majors guilty of assaulting and harassing his now-ex-girlfriend. The actor met movement coach Grace Jabbari on the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. According to the criminal complaint, Majors hit Jabbari’s face, twisted her arm, and fractured her finger during a fight in a chauffeured car in the wee hours of March 25. Majors is expected to be sentenced on February 6 for a count of misdemeanor assault, which carries jail time of up to a year, and a harassment violation.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office celebrated the outcome. “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,” Alvin Bragg said in a statement. “Today, a jury determined that pattern of abuse and coercion culminated with Mr. Majors assaulting and harassing his girlfriend.”
In a mixed verdict, the jury had also acquitted Majors of two charges. Majors’s defense lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, emphasized that the actor wasn’t convicted of the most serious charge he faced: assault with intent. “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,” she said in a statement after the verdict. “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.” She added that, “Mr. Majors still has faith in the process and looks forward to fully clearing his name.”
Majors often showed up to the trial hand in hand with a new girlfriend, the actress Meagan Good, along with a group of friends and family members, including his mom. The prosecution had alleged Majors “engaged in cruel and manipulative patterns of psychological and physical abuse” toward Jabbari even before the March incident, when she discovered Majors had been cheating on her; Majors’s defense had accused Jabbari of assaulting the actor out of jealousy and then lying about what happened to authorities. The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours before reaching its verdict, which had immediate effects for Majors’s career with the loss of his place in the Marvel universe.
Below, everything to know about the domestic-violence case against the actor.
What are the charges against Majors?
Prosecutors say the March 25 incident began when the couple was taking a private car from a Brooklyn party to Majors’s Chelsea apartment. According to a court filing reviewed by the Cut, Jabbari saw a text on the actor’s phone that said, “Wish I was kissing you right now.” When she took the phone from Majors’s hands to see who had sent the message, he allegedly “began grabbing the right side of Ms. Jabbari’s body and prying Ms. Jabbari’s right middle finger off the phone, causing bruising, swelling, and substantial pain.” The actor also allegedly twisted Jabbari’s right arm before striking her ear. The filing claims Majors then took his phone and left the car and that when Jabbari tried to follow him, the actor “grabbed her, picked her up, and threw her back inside.” As a result, prosecutors say she had a “fractured finger, bruising about her body, a laceration behind her right ear, and a bump on her head.”
The filing also references a surveillance video, published by Insider, which captured Jabbari on a sidewalk in the aftermath of the incident. In it, she is “visibly upset, crying, and seeking help from strangers to get an Uber cab home,” the filing reads. At one point in the video, Majors walks by without stopping when Jabbari calls after him.
Majors is being tried on two counts of misdemeanor assault and two counts of harassment. The judge had also granted Jabbari a full temporary order of protection against Majors in April.
Prosecutors also revealed that they have a report from the London Metropolitan Police, as well as medical records, involving a previously unreported September 2022 incident that they say is relevant to the domestic-violence case. The filing did not contain further details.
How has Majors responded?
Majors is represented by defense lawyer Priya Chaudhry, whose previous clients include Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah and the filmmaker Paul Haggis. Chaudhry has sought to paint Jabbari as physically aggressive and mentally unstable. In a statement shortly after news of Majors’s arrest broke, Chaudhry said, “Unfortunately, this incident came about because this woman was having an emotional crisis, for which she was taken to a hospital yesterday. The NYPD is required to make an arrest in these situations, and this is the only reason Mr. Majors was arrested.”
The defense claims it was Jabbari who assaulted Majors while trying to steal his phone—a fact they say the actor’s driver plans to corroborate. In a court filing reviewed by the Cut, Chaudhry claims that Majors ran out of the car and sent Jabbari a breakup text from a hotel, where he spent the night. The defense says Jabbari later showed up at Majors’s apartment after partying at a club, called him 32 times, accused him of infidelity via text, and threatened suicide. (Those purported texts were not included in court filings.) Majors came home later that morning and called 911, according to the document, after discovering Jabbari had taken “a bunch of sleeping pills” and was in his “locked bedroom, unconscious on the floor of a closet, with a cut behind her ear and a broken finger.”
In late March, Chaudhry provided a series of unverified text messages from Jabbari to Majors to the media that she says supports his version of events. “They said they had to arrest you as protocol when they saw the injuries on me and they knew we had a fight,” one message read. “Will make sure nothing happens about this. I told them it was my fault for trying to grab your phone. I only just got out of hospital. Just call me when you’re out. I love you.”
Another purported text reads, “They do not have my blessing on any charges being placed. I read the paper they gave me about strangulation and I said point blank this did not occur and should be removed immediately.” (Majors was initially accused of strangling Jabbari, a charge which has since been dropped.) The text goes on to assure Majors that “I’m doing all I can [on] my end. I also said to tell the judge to know that the origin of the call was to do with me collapsing and passing out and your worry as my partner due to our communication prior.”
In a letter to the court, Chaudhry claimed that body-camera footage will show a police officer had coached Jabbari “to say that Mr. Majors grabbed her by the throat” by “touching his own neck several times when questioning” her. The defense lawyer accused officers of being more sympathetic to a “petite white woman” than to Majors, who is a “tall, strong, young, very famous Black man.”
Chaudhry has also accused Jabbari of faking her injuries. In a court filing, she pointed to security-camera footage of Jabbari clubbing after Majors left her, minutely detailing the activities that footage purportedly shows she was capable of: tucking hair behind her right ear, pointing with her index finger, moving a lime aside to take a shot, and “dancing with her hand in a ball with all her fingers folded in — all without any visible signs of discomfort or any swelling or bruising whatsoever” (emphasis Chaudhry’s). In the sidewalk-surveillance footage from after the incident, Jabbari uses her right hand to put her hair in a bun and hold a cell phone, which the defense says is further proof that she was uninjured.
While much of the conversation in that surveillance video is inaudible, Chaudry wrote in a motion to dismiss the case that “Ms. Jabbari was not only completely unharmed but was describing what had just happened by repeatedly insisting that Mr. Majors had texts from another woman on his phone, and making no reference to suffering physical violence of any sort.” Insider published selfies that Majors purportedly took on the night of the incident, which are part of the defense’s evidence, that show a small scratch on his chin and scratch marks on his arm. “It is important to note that Mr. Majors told the police that Ms. Jabbari slapped him and tore his coat,” Chaudhry wrote in a letter to the court.
Why was Majors’s ex-girlfriend arrested?
Majors reportedly filed a complaint against Jabbari at a Chinatown NYPD precinct after he appeared in court for a June procedural hearing. Insider reported that two precincts “found probable cause to arrest” the woman, though no arrest was made until October 25, when Jabbari presented herself at the department’s 10th Precinct.
The police report Majors filed, viewed by Insider, reportedly says he pulled away from Jabbari, who grabbed his coat and phone in a car; the actor claims he never touched Jabbari other than to hoist her back into the car after their fight spilled out onto the street. The NYPD charged her with misdemeanor assault and criminal mischief, and she was released with a desk ticket summoning her back to court at a later date, according to the New York Times.
The district attorney’s office said in a statement that it would not prosecute Jabbari since the charges lacked merit. In the prosecution’s most recent filing, they also claim the defense had provided the NYPD with a photo of Jabbari for a wanted flyer.
What were the opening arguments?
On the morning of December 4, Majors strode into the courtroom wearing a long black coat and a fedora. He was carrying a Bible, a notebook, and his characteristic ceramic mug. Before taking a seat, he kissed Good, who wore a black strapless jumpsuit, and greeted a group of six women who also came to support him with a kiss on the cheek. (The defense did not answer the Cut’s question about how these women are related to Majors, but a source confirmed one of them was Majors’s mother.)
In his opening remarks, prosecutor Michael Perez alleged that even before the March 25 incident, Majors “engaged in cruel and manipulative patterns of psychological and physical abuse” toward Jabbari. Perez said the former couple had dated for two years and had discussed getting married and having kids. Yet shortly after the “honeymoon period” of their relationship, Perez claimed Majors became mean and controlling and even threatened suicide as a means of manipulation. In one July 2022 incident, according to Perez, the actor was so angry at Jabbari that he threw “household items” at the wall and shattered glass. A few months later, he alleged, Majors pulled headphones out of Jabbari’s ears during an argument and said, “You’re stupid if you don’t know what you did was wrong.” Majors told Jabbari he was a “great man,” Perez said, and compared her supporting role in the relationship to that of Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama. As for the March incident, Perez said that after Jabbari was allegedly assaulted by Majors, she sought refuge with strangers at a club before returning to the actor’s apartment and documenting her injuries.
The defense’s opening remarks were markedly more dramatic. Chaudhry characterized each person’s role in the incident like so: “One person emerges with a bloody gash, scratched and scared, while one person emerges unscratched and unhurt,” later “buying expensive Champagne and holding hands with strangers.” Wearing a gauzy white dress and using hand gestures for emphasis, Chaudhry continued to describe a scene in which Jabbari saw a text on Majors’s phone from a woman named Cleopatra (the woman sent Majors a text saying, “wish I was kissing you right now” and referencing D’Angelo’s “Lady”), allegedly assaulted the actor, then pinned the abuse on him due to jealousy. In a clear reference to race, the lawyer went on to say that there was “not a speck of blood on her light blouse, no blood on her blonde hair, and no mark on her fair complexion.” She asked how jurors could trust the credibility of someone whom Majors’s driver referred to as “psycho girl” and who woke up half-naked on the floor of the actor’s closet, confused about what had happened the previous night. Chaudhry alleged Jabbari sought revenge for her thwarted plan to become “Mrs. Majors” by ruining the actor’s “lifetime of hard work” right when he was at the pinnacle of his career. “This is a case about the end of a relationship, not about a crime,” Chaudhry said, “at least not one Mr. Majors committed.”
What did Majors’s ex-girlfriend say on the stand?
During her testimony, Jabbari described several incidents over the course of her two-year relationship with Majors in which she said his “violent temper” exploded. She got emotional as she described feeling isolated and afraid while dating Majors, who she said called himself “a monster” while apologizing for one particular outburst.
“I felt like I had to be perfect,” Jabbari told the court. “If I did one little thing, or said the wrong thing, the temper would show. I wanted to avoid it.”
Majors got angry with Jabbari when she mentioned an ex-boyfriend and when poor cell service kept her from communicating with him during a music festival, she testified. The actor threw candles and shouted at Jabbari during a visit to his Los Angeles home in the summer of 2022, she alleged, and then tore her headphones from her ears and stomped on them during another incident in London in September of that year. “I fear him physically quite a lot,” she said.
Jabbari also described the night of the incident in great detail. The prosecution showed text messages that a woman named Cleopatra sent to Majors, including a link to the D’Angelo song “Lady” followed by the phrase, “Wish I was kissing you right now.” Jabbari testified that, while the couple were in a car returning home after dinner and a show, she asked Majors to let her see those text messages and grabbed his phone. Majors then tried to pry the device from Jabbari’s fingers, she said, twisting her right arm behind her back until she was in “excruciating” pain and hitting her in the head. The actor then fled the car, according to Jabbari; when she saw him again, they briefly returned to the car to speak before Majors went to a hotel. Jabbari said she distracted herself at a club for a few hours before returning to their apartment, where she received a text from Majors saying he wanted to end the relationship.
Her injuries came into focus later that night: Jabbari said her right finger had started to bruise and she noticed dried blood behind her ear. She said she felt “scared” that Majors would come back and locked the bedroom door. Jabbari described waking up on the floor of a walk-in closet to a group of cops surrounding her. They took her to the hospital, she said, where doctors treated her ear injury and took an X-ray showing her finger was fractured.
During cross-examination, Chaudhry attempted to establish that Jabbari had a drinking problem. The defense lawyer said that Majors was upset by her drinking, to which Jabbari responded, “He would get upset with me and use drinking as an excuse for that.” Chaudhry claimed that the couple had an argument earlier in March, after which she said Jabbari drank from a bottle of wine before attempting to drive a car. “I don’t remember that at all,” Jabbari said.
Chaudhry also tried to cast doubt on Jabbari’s account of her injuries from the alleged assault. At one point, Chaudhry spent almost an hour pointing out instances in which Jabbari used her right hand after Majors had allegedly fractured her finger. While playing blurry surveillance footage of Jabbari in a nightclub, Chaudhry repeatedly paused the tape to ask Jabbari to confirm that she took a shot, picked up a lime, or wiped her mouth with her right hand. (The Cut counted at least 60 times Chaudhry asked Jabbari about her right finger or hand.) Chaudhry also asked Jabbari whether she felt dried blood when she was shown in the footage brushing her hair behind her ear or putting her hair up in a bun. Jabbari said that she hadn’t been touching the injured spot on her head. “I wasn’t focusing on pain,” she said. “I was just trying to have a nice time.” While showing footage of Jabbari dancing while smoking a cigarette, Chaudhry paused the video and asked, “Did you just hit your head on the DJ booth?” “No, I did not,” Jabbari answered.
Chaudhry further pointed to inconsistencies between what Jabbari told police and what she said in her testimony. The defense lawyer wanted to know if Jabbari had asked the cops whether Majors had hurt her, how she ended up in the closet, or told them that she didn’t remember how her finger got hurt. When Jabbari said she couldn’t remember, Chaudhry showed her an officer’s body camera footage. Jabbari began crying and said multiple times that she didn’t want to watch it again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it,” she said when Chaudhry queued up the footage for the third time, “but I just have to get on with it.” Afterward, Chaudhry asked, “Isn’t it a fact that you told police you couldn’t work out where your ear hurts?” “Yes, that’s true,” Jabbari responded. When a small portion of the body camera footage was played for the jury, Jabbari winced and began to cry again.
The defense lawyer also asked Jabbari about what Majors had paid for over the course of their relationship, including a birthday trip to Hawaii and flying seven friends to New York. Chaudhry said that on the day of Majors’s arrest before the alleged assault, Jabbari referred to Majors as “my perfect man.” When the lawyer asked Jabbari why she called him that, she said: “He was my boyfriend and I loved him.”
In a few instances, Jabbari was crying so heavily that she had to leave the courtroom for a break. At one point, Chaudhry brought up a note Jabbari sent to her friend about how Majors may have “thought she was dead” when he couldn’t get into their locked bedroom the night of the alleged assault. “Isn’t it true that when you were a teenager, your boyfriend tried to commit suicide?” Chaudhry said, though it’s unclear what point she was trying to make. Jabbari immediately burst into tears and left the witness stand. Later, when Jabbari watched body camera footage of the moment police officers found her lying on the closet floor, she began to cry. Chaudhry asked Jabbari to confirm whether she’d told an officer that she wasn’t sure whether she fell in the closet. After listening to the recording for a second time, Jabbari answered “Yes,” before bursting into tears and asking to leave the room.
Later, the judge unsealed text messages that he said helped explain why Jabbari was afraid of divulging information about the alleged assault in March to first responders. The texts concerned a separate incident in September 2022 and appeared to show Majors discouraging Jabbari from seeking medical treatment, though the judge said that specifics of what happened will not be allowed into evidence. “You have no perspective of what could happen if you go to hospital,” a text from Majors read. “They will ask you questions, and as I don’t think you actually protect us, it could lead to investigation even if you do lie and they suspect something.” “I will tell the doctor I bumped my head if I go,” Jabbari responded. “Why would I tell them what really happened when it’s clear I want to be with you?”
After reading the texts, the prosecution asked why Jabbari told medical professionals that she didn’t know how she got injured in the March incident. “I was scared of the consequences of it,” she said. “Still wanted to protect him, I guess.”
What did witnesses say happened?
A fellow choreographer, Holly Blakey, told jurors she spoke with Jabbari multiple times in the aftermath of the alleged assault. Blakey said she had met Majors a few times and found him to be “a very sweet, charming person.” She said the couple appeared “very close and serene” and finished each other’s sentences. Over the course of their relationship, however, Blakey said Jabbari lost weight, stayed at home more often, and took “less interest in herself.” “She’s someone very driven and has a lot of energy for life,” Blakey testified, “and I think I saw a lot of that disappear.” Blakey said she spoke to her friend multiple times on March 25 and that Jabbari sounded like a “very broken and very traumatized person.” Jabbari said Majors had hurt her, Blakey testified, and sent photos of those injuries over text.
An NYPD domestic-violence-prevention officer recounted what he saw after being called to the couple’s Chelsea penthouse. As the prosecutor played body-camera footage, Brendan Swayne said he and his colleagues found Jabbari in the closet, where she told them she had fallen asleep after taking a sleeping pill. He said that while she was “foggy” at first, her sentences became clearer over time. The officer also testified that Jabbari had a “frightened look on her face” when Majors was in the closet. Swayne said he made sure Majors stayed in a different room because Jabbari whispered that she didn’t want the actor “right outside.”
Jurors saw footage of Jabbari struggling to sit up and crying as she spoke to the officers. Swayne noticed her right middle finger was bruised and that she had a laceration on her right ear. The officer said that when he asked Jabbari multiple times what had caused her injuries, she expressed concern that “she didn’t want Mr. Majors to get in trouble” but eventually explained what Majors allegedly did to her finger.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Seth Zuckerman tried to prove that Swayne did not conduct a thorough investigation before arresting Majors. Zuckerman wanted to know whether Swayne had asked to see Jabbari’s phone, thoroughly looked through the apartment, interviewed witnesses, or reviewed surveillance footage before making his arrest. Swayne’s answer to all of the above was “no.” Zuckerman also made the point that Jabbari didn’t accuse Majors of injuring her finger until after Swayne asked, “Did he hurt your finger?” and that Swayne had made a mistake in his initial report, which said Jabbari had a “laceration behind her right eye.” Swayne said it was merely a typo and that he had meant to write “ear.”
The fourth and fifth witnesses were part of the group that met Jabbari on the street the night of the alleged assault and brought her to a friend’s birthday party. One of them testified that after Jabbari tearfully told them about her boyfriend’s infidelity, the witness invited Jabbari to a club where she gave Jabbari some ice after the dancer said her “finger was hurting.” At no point did Jabbari fall, the witness said, and she didn’t see any marks on Jabbari’s face, neck, ear, or fingers.
The driver of the Escalade the couple used on the night of the alleged assault had been expected to deliver important testimony. In its opening statements, the prosecution said Naveed Sarwar had described how Majors threw Jabbari “like a football” into the back of the car, while the defense claimed the driver had referred to Jabbari as a “psycho girl.” Instead, through an Urdu translator, Sarwar said on the stand that he saw Majors leave the car after the couple fought. Then the actor was “pushing” Jabbari “back into the car to get rid of her,” he testified. The driver also said, “I had a feeling the girl had hit the boy.” He was referencing Jabbari’s behavior toward Majors based on the sounds he heard, but he said he didn’t see anything. “You can only testify to what you saw,” the judge interjected.
Dr. William Chiang, who had evaluated Jabbari at the hospital, provided testimony about the nature of her injuries. The doctor glued a cut shut behind Jabbari’s right ear, a wound he said was “consistent with an altercation” or falling on a sharp object. He also pointed to an X-ray that showed Jabbari’s finger was fractured and said it was unlikely to have been self-inflicted or caused by a “direct fall.” During cross-examination, Chiang testified that Jabbari didn’t know the source of her injuries. When Chaudhry asked whether Jabbari’s fracture could have been caused by someone twisting or squeezing her arm, he responded that neither motion can “usually cause a break.” The doctor also said an injury caused by a blow to the head usually results in bruising, which Jabbari did not have. Jabbari’s score on an alcohol-use test indicated she was “at risk for a potential drinking problem,” according to Chiang.
Two other officers who responded to the scene also took the stand. One said that Majors that claimed Jabbari was unconscious and had “overdosed on sleeping pills and had attempted suicide.” The other said he found a “small amount of blood on the comforter on the bed.” The prosecution’s last witness, Jabbari’s manager and friend, said that upon visiting her at the hospital, “Grace was half the person I’d seen beforehand. She was upset, devastated.”
The defense called an NYPD detective who investigated Majors’s complaint against Jabbari. The detective said Chaudhry filed the report in-person, with Majors present on a FaceTime call. The detective said it was uncommon for a defense lawyer to file a domestic violence incident report on behalf of their client. An emergency room doctor who reviewed a photo of Jabbari’s finger injury said she did not think the dancer’s hand or finger had been twisted. The last person to testify before the defense rested its case was Majors’s agent, Elan Ruspoli, who said a distraught Majors called him on March 25 while “banging his fist” against the master bedroom door of the couple’s Chelsea apartment.
What evidence came out at trial?
The judge released a trove of evidence in the case to the public on December 13. This included photos showing a gash behind Jabbari’s ear and her swollen and bruised finger, as well as surveillance video from the night of the alleged assault that shows Majors pushing Jabbari into the car and then Jabbari chasing him down the street. It included audio of a 911 call in which Majors told dispatchers that Jabbari was “unconscious” in the closet and that he believed that she attempted suicide. Body-camera footage from responding police officers that was also released shows a disoriented Jabbari being woken up and questioned.
Evidence from separate incidents that Jabbari described in her testimony was also released. It includes a photo of a dented wall and shards of broken glass that Jabbari said she took after Majors threw candles around his bedroom, as well as an audio recording Jabbari made of the conversation where the actor said he needed a supportive partner like Coretta Scott King or Michelle Obama. In the audio, Majors tells Jabbari, “My tempers, my shit, my troubles, all that said, I am a great man,” while she cries in the background, then he accuses her of being drunk. The text messages from a third incident that show Majors dissuading Jabbari from going to the hospital were also released.
What was said in closing arguments?
Chaudhry delivered a dramatic defense of Majors, claiming that video evidence and witness testimony completely exonerated the actor. The lawyer, wearing a red and gold dress, told jurors that “Grace Jabbari is a liar.” Chaudhry hit the podium repeatedly and pointed her fingers in the air for emphasis as she laid out her version of what happened on March 25. At the end of her summation, she cried. In Chaudhry’s telling, Jabbari chased Majors in a jealous rage, went “revenge partying,” and then hurt herself sometime after she returned to the couple’s apartment. Jabbari said multiple times that she “didn’t know” how she got her injuries, Chaudhry reminded jurors. “What happened in the eight hours from when she got home looking fine, sauntering through the lobby, and when she was found by the man who called 911?” the lawyer asked.
She characterized Jabbari’s testimony as “her white lies, her big lies, and all her pretty little lies.” Chaudhry disputed that Jabbari had hit her head and said surveillance video showing Majors pushing the dancer into the car was just an attempt to protect her from ongoing traffic. “You don’t get to destroy people’s lives with your fantasies,” Chaudhry said. “Grace is obviously an emotional person, many people are, but she cannot distinguish between facts and her feelings.” She speculated that Jabbari may have lied because “She wants to make money.” The lawyer also referenced Majors’s race on multiple occasions, repeatedly citing how dangerous it is for a Black man in America to call 911. She claimed the police “immediately decided who they were going to call a victim and who they saw as a criminal” without any investigation, prompting Majors to dab his eyes with a tissue. “Why are you here,” Chaudhry asked the jury at the end of her roughly one-hour speech. Then she paused and began to cry. “You are here to end this nightmare for Jonathan Majors.”
The prosecution’s closing argument, delivered by Kelli Galaway, encouraged jurors to focus exclusively on what happened between Jabbari and Majors in the car. Galaway said jurors need only trust their eyes for proof of the harassment charge and replayed surveillance footage that shows Majors repeatedly pushing Jabbari into the Escalade. Galaway also cast doubt on the defense’s witnesses, and accused them of paying an ER doctor $37,000 to testify. The lawyer noted that Jabbari did not call 911, initially worried about getting Majors in trouble, and that she had nothing to gain from cooperating with prosecutors. That the defense tried to paint her as a “vengeful ex, a woman scorned,” is “not consistent with the testimony we heard.”
The prosecutor also said Jabbari’s testimony about how Majors had been previously violent and tried to dissuade her from going to the hospital was important context for understanding how Jabbari behaved after the alleged assault. She argued that witness testimony showing Jabbari was icing her finger at the club and that she had sent a photo of her injuries to a friend also dispels the defense’s narrative that Jabbari hurt herself sometime after she came home. “This is not a he-said, she-said case,” Galaway told the jurors. “All the evidence supports the fact that he assaulted her.”
What other accusations does Majors face?
Majors has allegedly been physically and emotionally abusive to multiple former romantic partners, Rolling Stone reported in June. The magazine cites more than a dozen sources who claim that the Creed III actor strangled an ex-girlfriend and emotionally abused her and another ex, though it does not include firsthand accounts from the women themselves. “It was pervasively known that he was [a good actor], and that he also would terrorize the people that he had dated,” one person told the magazine. An attorney for Majors denied the allegations in the report.
Two sources told the magazine that the woman Majors allegedly strangled had developed an exit plan and tried to leave Majors multiple times. A second woman described her relationship with Majors as “emotional torture,” nine people familiar with the situation told Rolling Stone. Although the sources said Majors was not physically abusive in that relationship, they described moments of “near violence” in which the actor would talk about needing to “hit something or punch a wall.” Others told the magazine that Majors was controlling and jealous in the relationship and wanted to be in charge of everything “from what they ate to who the partner could interact with.”
Majors’s defense team also provided Rolling Stone with six character-witness statements from women who dated or knew the actor well; when the magazine reached out to these women, however, three said they never signed off on the statements and a fourth said the words attributed to her were “pre-written, not truthful, and that she had never approved of its release.”
The report also detailed aggressive behavior on Majors’s part during his time at Yale Drama School and on various sets. “No one is surprised that this is coming out,” one person told Rolling Stone. “It always felt like it was a matter of time because his behavior never changed. He’s kind of a bad dude, and now it’s just catching up with him.”
How have the charges affected Majors’s career?
Majors rode a rocket ship to fame after his starring role in the 2019 indie film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Kang the Conqueror, his villainous character from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, was set to become a fixture of the Marvel franchise and the star of a new Avengers movie in 2025. But the studio dropped Majors after the guilty verdict was announced, according to Variety.
The actor received critical acclaim for his performance in Magazine Dreams, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and was set to appear on big screens in December. Walt Disney and Searchlight now have indefinitely pushed back the release date. Majors has also been nixed from an adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel The Man in My Basement and is no longer in the running for an Otis Redding biopic.
The actor was also dropped by his talent agency, Entertainment 360, and by his PR firm, although he is still represented by the talent agency WME.
This post has been updated with additional reporting.
