Jonathan Majors on Trial, Sexual Abuse, Marvel Firing, Magazine Dreams

In December 2023, Jonathan Majors walked through a dense thicket of news cameras and climbed into the back of a black Chevy Suburban pulling away from the criminal courthouse in lower Manhattan. After a highly publicized trial, Majors had just learned that a jury convicted him of one count of misdemeanor third-degree assault and one count of second-degree harassment of his ex-girlfriend, British dancer Grace Jabbari. Inside the hushed car, a member of his legal team turned around from the front seat and delivered the next piece of news. “He goes, ‘I’m just gonna tell you now,’” Majors says. “That way you’re not surprised, and you can start processing it. They fired you. Marvel fired you.’”

Before his arrest that March, Majors was fresh off the Warner Bros. box office hit Creed III, the Marvel movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and an Emmy nomination for the HBO series Lovecraft Country. He seemed poised to explode professionally. Cast as the MCU’s new villain, Kang the Conqueror, the heir apparent to Josh Brolin’s franchise staple character Thanos, Majors was on track to make life-changing money and to lead 2026’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. He was also set to be the subject of a well-financed Oscar campaign for the indie movie Magazine Dreams, a drama Disney’s specialty studio, Searchlight Pictures, bought after it premiered to critical raves at Sundance, particularly for Majors’ raw performance.

All of that evaporated when a jury determined that Majors was responsible for a cut behind Jabbari’s ear and a fractured finger, and a judge later sentenced him to probation and a 52-week domestic violence intervention program. Majors was also dropped by his manager, Entertainment 360, and publicity firm, The Lede Company. (His agent, WME’s Elan Ruspoli, who testified as a witness in the trial, remained with Majors and still represents him today.)

“There were days when it was like, ‘Is this real?’” says Majors, 35, of the period of time during and immediately after his trial, where he pleaded not guilty. “It’s a heartbreak like I’ve never experienced and it just compounded and compounded.”

Majors’ story provokes a range of reactions — anger from survivors of domestic violence, protectiveness from his friends and colleagues, confusion from fans. The actor’s contested narrative is about to enter its next act, when Magazine Dreams finally comes to theaters on March 21, more than two years after the film’s Sundance premiere, via the small distributor Briarcliff Entertainment.

In a long and emotional interview in February, and a follow-up interview in March, Majors, who had not sat down with a journalist since he was sentenced in April 2024, talked for the first time about the aftermath of the trial, about the childhood sexual abuse that he says led to depression as an adult and about what his life looks like now. Majors says he is unable to comment directly on Jabbari’s allegations of domestic violence (Jabbari also brought a civil suit against Majors, and their settlement presumably limits what either party can say about the case). Still, his position frustrates those who followed his trial and want a full apology, including at least one ex-girlfriend who spoke to THR. Majors says he does feel responsible for the direction of his life.

“At some point there has to be accountability for writing your own story,” Majors says. “Am I going to fall into that narrative of falling apart, of self-destruction? Have a struggle, blame the world. Have a struggle, hate yourself. Have a struggle, deny everything. None of those narratives is beneficial.” Instead, Majors says, his strategy as he builds a new life post-trial is: “Have a struggle, learn, metabolize, grow.”

In addition to Majors, this article is also based on interviews with 19 others, most speaking on the record about their experiences with the actor. Whether Hollywood will take Majors back is an open question, and will depend in part on whether audiences show up for Magazine Dreams. But many high-profile people who have worked with Majors are advocating for him. “You don’t get to say sorry these days,” says Whoopi Goldberg, who appeared with Majors in his first screen role, the 2017 TV miniseries When We Rise, and works with his fiancée, Meagan Good, on the Amazon Prime series Harlem, which just aired its third season. “He was arrested. He went to court. He did what he was supposed to do. I’m not sure what else there is.” Majors’ Creed III director and co-star Michael B. Jordan says he would like to work with Majors again. “I would love to make Creed IV together — among other projects,” Jordan says over email. Matthew McConaughey, who co-starred with Majors in the 2018 Sony crime drama White Boy Rick, writes, “I’ve known and know him as someone who is continuously striving to improve as a human, a man and an actor. I believe in him.”

But Maura Hooper, one of two of Majors’ ex-girlfriends who gave a pretrial statement to prosecutors in the Jabbari case alleging abuse, in her case emotional abuse, isn’t sold on Majors’ comeback. “I don’t really care that his movie is coming out,” Hooper says. “What do you get at the end of a 52-week domestic violence course? Do the victims get a debrief? How could I know if he’s changed? I don’t see redemption happening here.”

***

Majors grew up outside Dallas, raised by his mother, a pastor, with whom he is still close. His father, a classical pianist who was in the Air Force, left when he was 8, and Majors did not see him again until his dad came with his sister to see him perform in a college play in North Carolina. “My pop is a very beautiful man, very gentle, but had some qualities that were not complementary to family life,” Majors says. “He was the best dad until he wasn’t. And when he wasn’t, he was gone.”

Majors says after his trial, in addition to the domestic violence program, he underwent therapy and reengaged with his pastor, and as a result began to unpack childhood traumas he had not confronted before. “I dealt with sexual abuse from both men and women from the time I was 9,” Majors says. “From people who are supposed to look after you, in the absence of a father. I was fucked up.” In recent months, when Majors told his mother about the abuse, he says she apologized for not being able to protect him. “I’m like, ‘It’s not even an issue, mom. I just want you to know. And now we can all get busy and continue to connect and grow and learn from it, because it’s something that was in our family.’” Processing the abuse, Majors says, has led to more self-knowledge about his behavior in relationships. “There are no excuses, but by getting help, you begin to understand things about yourself.”

As a kid, Majors played sports — basketball, boxing and, with a Texan level of fervor, football. He took advanced placement classes in school and participated in debate and forensics competitions. “I would say, ‘I’m just fooling around,’” Majors says of the oratory competitions. “But I wasn’t.” Money was always an issue, he says, with the family, including his sister, Monica, now a doctor, and brother, Cameron, now a kinesiologist, frequently being evicted and having to move. He describes his mother, who has a masters degree in divinity, selling everything from coffins at a funeral parlor to her own blood plasma to pay the bills.

Majors was kicked out of his high school for fighting — fights that often started, he says, because he or his siblings were being bullied. “We looked poor,” he says. “We were pretty nomadic going from school to school, place to place. I had a big nose. Guys would pick on me. And I was for a long time the outsider.” Thanks to some teachers who were invested in his talent, Majors eventually found his way into theater as a different, healthier channel for his emotions. “I never had a moment where I went, ‘I want to be a movie star,’” Majors says. “But I had the moment that was like, ‘I’m going to act for the rest of my life, and I’m going to be the best I can be at this. I’m going to throw everything into it,’ and I have.”

After getting his bachelor of fine arts at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and while completing his master of fine arts at Yale Drama, Majors booked his first screen role, as gay activist Ken Jones in When We Rise, the miniseries with Goldberg. For the many strong opinions about Majors’ offscreen life, Hollywood does agree on one thing — the quality of his acting. Majors broke into the industry with a series of emotionally varied performances: a daydreaming playwright in the 2019 A24 drama The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the son of a withholding Vietnam veteran in Spike Lee’s 2020 Netflix war drama Da 5 Bloods, a young man traveling through the Jim Crow South in the Jordan Peele-produced horror series Lovecraft Country, a 19th century gunslinger in the Jay-Z-produced 2021 Netflix Western The Harder They Fall, an aviator opposite Glen Powell in the independently financed 2022 Korean War drama Devotion. “One of my jobs as an actor is to let people see themselves, to give them an opportunity to examine themselves through me,” Majors says, of his craft. “It’s a service job in a way.”

Even in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, one of the worst-reviewed Marvel movies, critics singled out his work. “It’s Majors who brings real gravitas to the proceedings,” wrote THR’s critic, Frank Scheck, of the 2023 sci-fi film. “While it’s not surprising that the actor’s imposing physicality perfectly suits his iconic villainous character, he also invests his performance with such an arrestingly quiet stillness and ambivalence that you’re on edge every moment he’s onscreen.”

***

In March 2023, after a seeing a play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and having dinner out, Majors and Jabbari were in the back seat of a chauffeured Escalade, crossing the Manhattan Bridge, when Jabbari saw a text pop up on Majors’ phone that read, “Oh how I wish to be kissing you.” During Jabbari’s testimony at trial, she said that she tried to grab Majors’ phone, and that in response he twisted her right arm. Suddenly, Jabbari testified, she felt “a really hard blow across my head.” After the car finished crossing the bridge and arrived on Canal Street in lower Manhattan, Majors asked the driver to stop. Video that was played in court shows Majors jump out of the Escalade, followed by Jabbari, before he turns around, picks her up, pushes her back inside the car and runs. Jabbari then jumps out of the car and chases him.

The sole witness to the altercation was the car’s driver, who testified at the trial through an Urdu language translator. “The boy wanted to get rid of the girl and he opened the door,” the driver testified. “He was saying, ‘Leave me alone. I have to go.’ He was not doing anything, she was doing it.” That night Majors went to stay at a hotel, Jabbari testified, and Jabbari went to a nightclub, before ultimately going back to the penthouse apartment in Chelsea where they lived. The next morning when Majors came home, he found Jabbari unconscious on the floor of a walk-in closet and called 911. During the call, which was played in court, when the 911 operator asked Majors what happened, he said, “I don’t know. She’s unconscious. She’s naked from the bottom down. She has a sweatshirt on. She’s my ex-partner. We broke up.” When the call is transferred to an EMS worker, Majors tells the emergency responder that Jabbari is not awake, but is breathing. “What should I do?” Majors asks. “What — what should I do?”

Jabbari was taken to Bellevue Hospital to treat the cut behind her ear and the fractured finger and to have a psychological evaluation. Majors was arrested and charged with three counts of third-degree assault, one count of second-degree harassment and one count of aggravated harassment, all misdemeanors. Typically, on such charges, a defendant would settle to prevent going to trial, but Majors insisted on his innocence, and his attorney said Jabbari was the aggressor in the incident, even going so far as to file a cross-complaint against her, which the Manhattan DA’s office declined to prosecute.

During Majors’ two-week trial in late 2023, the actor entered court each day with Good by his side and a Bible under his arm. Jabbari testified that Majors had a violent temper and that he had often slipped into “rage and aggression” during their relationship. Text messages between the two of them that were entered into evidence painted a portrait of a volatile relationship. In a series of messages from September 2022, six months before the car altercation, the couple were communicating about headaches Jabbari said she was having. Majors texted Jabbari, “I fear you have no perspective of what could happen if you go to the hospital. They will ask you questions, and as I don’t think you actually protect us, it could lead to an investigation even if you do lie, and they suspect something.” The facts of that September 2022 incident were not further detailed for the jury. The jury ended up splitting its verdict, convicting Majors of one count of misdemeanor third-degree assault and one count of second-degree harassment, but acquitting him of two other counts of assault and aggravated harassment. Essentially, they seemed to believe that Majors had, in fact, caused Jabbari’s injuries, but that he hadn’t intended to.

In another highly unusual move for a defendant, Majors gave an interview to ABC News before his sentencing, in which he said of Jabbari that he had been “reckless with her heart” but that he had never struck a woman, “ever.”

***

Majors’ athletic body has been a key part of his success, allowing him to convincingly control the multiverse in Marvel and to step into the boxing ring opposite Jordan in Creed III. At 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Majors, who does this interview wearing a loose-fit sweater with an Aztec print, says he prefers baggy clothing. “I always keep myself covered up,” he says. “If the body was needed [for a role], it was needed. I worked on the body the same way I worked on my lines or the dialect or what have you.” Majors says he is the smallest man in his family and that his ability to build muscle comes significantly from his genetics — his grandfathers, he says, were 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-7 and over 250 pounds. Still, in Magazine Dreams, in which he plays a troubled aspiring bodybuilder named Killian, Majors found a role that pushed him to his limit. He calls it, “A very expensive movie. Not the budget, but the cost of it as an artist physically and emotionally.” For the duration of the 40-day shoot, Majors worked with four trainers to stay at the same level of muscularity that professional bodybuilders attain on the day of a competition, eating 6,000 calories a day along with creatine supplements and lifting weights before walking into a scene. Although the character takes steroids in the movie, Majors says he did not take any performance-enhancing drugs, for health reasons. “I want to have kids,” he says.

Magazine Dreams writer-director Elijah Bynum describes Killian as “someone who moves through the world with the peculiar pain of being both feared and ignored. The more he tries to connect, the further he pushes others away. He’s built up this armor of muscle around him to protect what is a very fragile, very lonely soul.” Watching Majors play Killian’s emotional breakdown and descent into violence in Magazine Dreams “was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” says the movie’s producer Jennifer Fox, who also produced Michael Clayton, Nightcrawler and The Bourne Legacy. “The level of commitment was extraordinary. I watched people on set break into applause after a take, some moved to tears, crewmembers exchanging looks, knowing they were witnessing something truly special.”

When he wasn’t on camera, Majors would jog around the soundstage, meditate and listen to music. “An actor needs a protected space to sustain the intensity of a performance like this,” Fox says. “That meant he often had to keep to himself.” Majors gave gifts to the cast and crew during the production, Fox says— a shaved ice truck, pies, a coffee truck. “He understood that he couldn’t always disengage between takes,” Fox says, “but he found meaningful ways to express his gratitude.”

After Majors’ arrest in the Jabbari case, there were news stories about his behavior on set, with allegations that he snapped at crewmembers. On the Magazine Dreams set, someone complained that Majors barked at a crewmember for approaching him as he was walking into a scene in which Killian has to punch himself in the face. Asked about the incident, Majors says he doesn’t remember the specific interaction, but that “it’s a difficult scene and it was a moment of preparation. I was like, ‘OK, I’m ready now.’”

THR reached out to 11 producers, directors and executives who have worked with the actor, three of whom he suggested (including Jordan). All of them, including the ones Majors did not know THR was contacting, praised his acting, his work ethic and his behavior on set. “Every day I saw someone who was incredibly respectful to me,” says Fox. “’Yes ma’am, no ma’am.’” There is always a gulf between the persona people show the world and the human being they are in private, and Majors’ professionalism on sets doesn’t disprove the allegations of his behavior in past romantic relationships. But many who have worked with Majors spoke of their shock when news of his arrest broke, their sense that the allegations didn’t align with their personal experiences of him.

Jabbari’s attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. In November, after settling the civil suit she brought against Majors in which she alleged that he had been violent toward her multiple times, her lawyers released a statement saying, “We hope that [Jabbari] can finally put this chapter behind her and move forward with her head held high.”

THR also contacted two ex-girlfriends who had given pretrial statements to prosecutors, including Hooper, who alleged emotional abuse, and one who said that Majors had been physically abusive. Hooper, who dated Majors from 2013 to 2015 when they were students at Yale Drama School, detailed multiple incidents of controlling behavior, including Majors dictating where she could go and who she could socialize with and making threatening statements. The other woman, who was engaged to Majors from 2015 to 2019, did not respond to a request for comment. (The judge in Majors’ trial did not allow either statement, which were both submitted under the legally contentious Molineux rule that allows testimony about past behavior, to be entered into evidence.)

Majors is not the first actor to face allegations of domestic violence, and many before him went on to continued career opportunities. Mel Gibson pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery of his ex-girlfriend in 2011 and was nominated for an Oscar in 2017; Christian Slater was sentenced to 90 days in jail and a one-year treatment program for battery in 1998 for violence against an ex-girlfriend and went on to win a Golden Globe for Mr. Robot. Josh Brolin was arrested in 2004 and charged with spousal battery against then-wife Diane Lane, who told police he had hit her; police dropped the case after Lane told them she didn’t want to press charges, and Brolin went on to enjoy a career resurgence, collecting an Oscar nomination and eventually, getting the Thanos role that is a kind of precursor to the Marvel role that Majors had.

There are differences between these cases and Majors’, including the pre-#MeToo era in which these arrests took place. There is also the fact that these actors are all white. Asked if he believes that race is a factor in the way his story is unfolding, Majors says, “My journey is my journey, and it doesn’t benefit me to compare.”

***

During his trial, Majors appeared in court daily with his then girlfriend, now fiancée, actress Meagan Good, whom he had met at the Ebony Power 100 Gala in November 2022, as he was walking out of a unisex bathroom and she was walking in. “I had seen a lot of his work and I was just like, ‘This kid is super talented,’” Good says, recalling the interaction. “I just remember thinking, ‘Hollywood is a strange town, and when you’re new to it, you don’t know who to trust or what’s what. I just want to say something and affirm him.’” As Majors remembers it, “She said to me, ‘I see you. I really love what you’re doing. Keep going.’ I stood up straight and said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’ We just looked at each other and that was that. And I didn’t stop thinking about it.” Majors says he sees pictures of himself sometimes from this era in his life, when his career was exploding, and thinks, “‘Oh, you’ve got a lot of work to do.’ And Meagan’s helped with that.”

They communicated as friends, the relationship turning romantic in the months after Majors’ March 2023 arrest. In May 2023, someone tipped off TMZ that the couple were at a movie theater together in L.A. “We didn’t plan to start dating and we didn’t plan to be seen out together,” Good says. “But once we were in a relationship, it was like, ‘Hey, this is what’s happening.’” Asked why she stayed with Majors and supported him publicly during the trial, Good says, “People tend to move out of the way out of concern for their careers or their reputations. To me, that’s not real love. If you know someone and if you believe in someone, it’s not conditional.”

In the year since Majors’ sentencing, he says he has built a quiet life in the Hollywood Hills with Good, who divorced preacher-turned-producer DeVon Franklin in 2022. They hike with their four Belgian Malinois dogs, work out and watch movies together. Majors has an 11-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, and he says he has continued to pay the same level of child support he paid when his career was booming, thanks to residual checks and help from friends. “When my dad split, we didn’t get anything,” he says. “And in this moment, I was like, ‘My daughter is not going to want for anything. I didn’t want to sacrifice her way of living.’ I didn’t want her to feel a big shift.” Majors lost his penthouse apartment in New York, and, within six months of his arrest, had diminished the nest egg he’d built from six years of continuous work in the entertainment industry by half. “Growing up poor, I had that muscle memory,” he says. “I was used to getting out there, finding a way. But it’s actually harder to find a way when you are trapped in notoriety. You can’t get out there and just work.”

Fitness is a big part of Majors’ life, and he is in the midst of starting an online wellness platform, with Good and four men he trains with daily at a gym in West Hollywood. There are also plans for a clothing line and supplements.

Majors has been reading scripts and taking meetings, including on a superhero film project. “No relation to the big guys, DC or Marvel, but a pretty wicked story,” he says. “I’m glad to be reading.” He is also attached to an independent revenge thriller called Merciless, to be directed by Martin Villeneuve, brother of Denis. “Sometimes it feels like it’s not going to happen,” he says of the resumption of his acting career. “And sometimes it feels like we start next week.”

Magazine Dreams’ distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment, is the same small company that picked up The Apprentice when other companies balked at the Donald Trump origin story, and helped score Oscar nominations for Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. Briarcliff plans to open Magazine Dreams in 800 theaters, and will expand based on how it performs. “Anecdotally, we know that Black audiences — both men and women — are extremely enthused about the film,” says Briarcliff CEO Tom Ortenberg. “There is also pent-up demand from the art house audience, which has been waiting for it since Sundance. And the bodybuilding audience is enormously enthused about this film.” Ortenberg said the feedback he has gotten from entertainment industry colleagues since he picked up Magazine Dreams has been positive. “Based on what I’m seeing, people are rooting for Jonathan,” Ortenberg says.

A prominent casting director for major studio movies says Majors faces an uphill battle rebuilding his acting career. “If [Magazine Dreams] comes out and it’s a giant hit, then everybody reassesses,” she says. “Maybe not at the studios, maybe not at public companies, but independent people. You look at a guy like Jonathan Majors, is he talented? Absolutely. But is there somebody else who can fill the bill? Probably. There are a lot of really talented people out there, and there are fewer and fewer projects, so, with the exception of a very small echelon, people are replaceable.” This casting director believes that historically, Black actors have been held to different standards than white ones in Hollywood. “Like other marginalized people, you know you have to be in better behavior,” she says.

Asked what he thinks his life will look like five years from now, Majors says, “Me and Meagan, maybe a couple kids and my [11-year-old daughter], happy, at ease, not worried about anything.” Professionally, he says, he hopes he will be acting. “Do I hope to make more movies? Absolutely. That is my intention. But that’s not my call. I don’t have a studio. And I’ve given up control.” Asked what he would say to the entertainment industry today, Majors says, “I would tell them I’m still learning, and I would thank them for participating in my growth.”

This story appears in the March 19 issue of Best In Business 2024 magazine. Click here to subscribe.