2 sides of movie star
Accuser tells jury in Majors assault trial he was nice, nasty
Professional dancer Grace Jabbari wiped away tears Tuesday as she told a Manhattan jury how her sugary romance with movie star Jonathan Majors turned sour when Majors unleashed rage upon her — including one night last March when he allegedly assaulted her after she spied another woman’s texts on his cell phone.
Jabbari, 30, said Majors, 34, was “very kind and loving” at first during the relationship, kindled in August 2021 on the set of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” a Marvel movie in which Majors plays the villain Kang the Conqueror. He wrote her poetry nightly, and left her handwritten notes, Jabbari said.
However, over time, she said, Majors’ behavior changed, and the movie star’s ex-girlfriend described several violent outbursts by him — including an incident when she visited Majors at his West Hollywood home in 2022. At the time, he was working on the film “Magazine Dreams,” in which he plays a troubled bodybuilder.
During the West Hollywood incident, Jabbari said, Majors grew irate and threw anything he could reach in her direction, denting walls and breaking glass with candles and household objects.
“His face kind of changes when he gets into that place. He’s a big guy, so you just want to step back,” she said.
Majors faces up to a year behind bars if convicted of misdemeanor assault charges for allegedly roughing up Jabbari in the March 25 incident in Manhattan, which occurred as he and Jabbari headed home in a hired car after a night out. Majors has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and harassment.
That night, Majors’ demeanor turned cold right before the couple left to see a show together in Brooklyn, and lashed out afterward at dinner, Jabbari told the jury.
In the car on the way home, Jabbari said, Majors calmed down — until she saw a text from another woman on Majors’ phone.
“I was shocked,” she testified. “With everything else in our relationship, I never considered infidelity to be one of the things that was also happening.”
She grabbed the phone from his hands, straining to see his messages, when she felt a heavy thud on her body as Majors tried to pry the phone from her hands, Jabbari said on the witness stand. He then twisted her arm behind her back and whacked her head, she recalled.
Majors ordered the car to stop, and they both tumbled out to the street, Jabbari said.
The actor then attempted to shove Jabbari back into the car, she recounted. But she got out of the car and followed him as he headed off on foot through Chinatown streets, CCTV footage played at the trial showed.
Majors backtracked and Jabbari again followed him, asking him questions about the other woman. They argued, and Majors said they shouldn’t cause a scene in public, so they both got back in the car, where her phone and bag were.
She grabbed them there. The two argued a bit more, and Majors stormed off.
A group of strangers who saw the argument on the street tried to console Jabbari, she recounted. She described her mental state as “devastated” and “heartbroken.”
“The worst thing would have been to go back to the empty apartment we shared together,” Jabbari said, describing her thoughts at the time.
Majors appeared in court Tuesday clutching a Bible. His now-girlfriend Meagan Good accompanied him, and the pair walked into the courtroom hand in hand.
Under questioning from Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Kelli Galaway, Jabbari, wearing plaid pants and a jacket, struggled to keep her composure. At one point, she left the room for a couple of minutes to cool down.
Jabbari told the jury of three men and three women of how she grew to fear the actor after he frequently started blowing up on her and became physically threatening.
The incidents were all part of the “cruel and manipulative pattern of psychological and physical abuse” that Majors inflicted against Jabbari throughout their two-year relationship, which Assistant District Attorney Michael Perez outlined in opening statements Monday.
During Jabbari’s testimony, the prosecution played a recording she made of Majors shouting at her in one incident in which he got angry after she brought a close friend over to their shared home after a visit to a nearby pub in September 2022.
“How dare you come home like that?” he raged in the recording. “My temper … all that said, I am a great man! A great man.
I am doing great things, not just for me but for my culture, for my world.”
The “Loki” star even threatened to take his own life, Jabbari said.
“He said that he was a monster and that he wanted to kill himself, and that he’s put actions in place to do so,” she said.
She described how she internalized his accusations and kept the details of their relationship secret from even her closest friends and family. She walked on eggshells around him, tried to talk him down when he grew angry and felt the emotional whiplash of his apologies and expressions of affection that often immediately came after an episode.
“I felt like I was existing in his world emotionally and physically,” Jabbari said. “I didn’t really feel my own autonomy at this point. … I had really low self-esteem and I had lost a lot of weight. I felt really incompetent, but at the same time I felt really dependent on him because he was the only one who knew.”