Jonathan Majors — known for playing a supervillain in a Marvel franchise — will settle into a more uncomfortable role Monday as a New York City jury begins hearing evidence in his domestic assault case.
The 34-year-old actor will appear in a lower Manhattan courtroom as a defendant in a criminal trial where his ex-girlfriend will confront him on charges that he assaulted her during a Chinatown taxi ride earlier this year.
Grace Jabbari, a British dancer and movement coach, will testify that her ex attacked her when she snatched his cellphone away after reading a text — presumably from another woman — that read “I wish I was kissing you right now,” Manhattan prosecutors say.
The six jurors and two alternates deciding the case will hear two very different narratives during Monday morning’s opening statements of what happened at around midnight on March 25 inside a car on Canal Street — just a few blocks away from the courthouse where the two-week-trial will unfold.
In prosecutors’ telling, Majors — then a fast-rising Hollywood star — responded to Jabbari grabbing his phone by yanking her finger, twisting her arm behind her back, hitting her ear and then picking her up and throwing her back inside the cab after she tried to follow him out.
He was also initially charged with choking Jabbari, but prosecutors later dropped the strangulation rap for lack of evidence.
But Majors, who has pleaded not guilty to six misdemeanor assault and three misdemeanor harassment charges, has maintained that Jabbari was the aggressor.
In June, three months after his arrest, Majors walked into the NYPD’s 10th Precinct and provided a detective with evidence that a “drunk and hysterical” Jabbari had grabbed and scratched at his face that night — drawing blood, his lawyers have said in court papers.
Majors’ attorneys have also released video that they claim sheds doubt on the severity of Jabbari’s injuries, including footage of Jabbari being twirled by her allegedly broken finger and drinking champagne at the Loosie’s nightclub on the Bowery hours after the altercation.
Jabbari is expected to take the stand at some point this week in Manhattan Criminal Court — and whether jurors believe her could decide Majors’ fate.
“This case is really about the credibility of one person,” Priya Chaudhry, a lawyer for Majors, said during a pre-trial hearing last week.
Jabbari was ultimately arrested for her role in the altercation as well after a 10th Precinct detective found there to be probable cause that she assaulted Majors, but the DA’s office immediately tossed the case for what it called a “lack of prosecutorial merit.”
Criminal Court Judge Michael Gaffey has ruled that Majors’ lawyers will be allowed to cross-examine Jabbari about her arrest, over objections from prosecutors.
But the judge called the circumstances of Jabbari’s arrest “highly unusual” and suggested that Majors may have been given special treatment because of his celebrity status.
“There are individuals who pass through this courthouse every day who are indigent and accused of a crime. I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed, three months later, an indigent person requesting the arrest of a complainant, and then the complainant was indeed arrested,” Gaffey said during last week’s hearings.
“Did this only come about because of the high-profile nature of this case?” Gaffey added. “And if this was an indigent, everyday New Yorker, would this have happened?”
Majors’ attorneys, meanwhile, have accused prosecutors of having tunnel vision regarding their client and of targeting him because of his race.
“Rather than dismiss false charges against an innocent Black man, the People instead
have willfully withheld evidence of his innocence” and “buried evidence proving that his white
accuser is lying,” the lawyers have claimed in court papers.
Majors this year has starred as the villain Kang the Conqueror in the Marvel film “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” and co-starred alongside Michael B. Jordan in “Creed III.”
Critics have also praised his performance as an obsessive aspiring bodybuilder in the dark character study “Magazine Dreams,” which debuted to rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
But the film’s release date was delayed indefinitely after news of Majors’ arrest broke.
The actor has appeared in court wearing double-breasted suits, carrying a gold-leaf bible and with his new girlfriend, actress Meagan Good, by his side.
It was not yet clear as of Monday morning whether Majors will testify in his own defense.
He’ll be given the choice of whether to do so after prosecutors finish putting on their case.
