Jonathan Majors’s ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, continued to testify on December 6, crying at times as she talked about how their relationship went from a whirlwind romance to violent manipulation, during the actor’s Manhattan domestic-assault trial. Over her two days on the stand, Jabbari described how Majors’s intense, early professions of love toward her were quickly replaced by rage. “He said that he was a monster and wanted to kill himself and had actions in place to do so,†Jabarri recalled. She said guilt and fear for his well-being deterred her from leaving the controlling relationship. “He’d scare me when he said things like, ‘It’s in place. It’s in motion.’†She also described the events leading up to, and directly following, the alleged March 24 assault.
When Jabbari testified about Majors allegedly assaulting her on March 24, causing “excruciating†pain, she spoke matter-of-factly and did not appear to shed any tears. Majors looked toward her for long spells. Majors’s face had an air of attentive disbelief. He kept his eyebrows raised at various points, as if trying to make a visual show of his skepticism.
Jabbari’s account of the alleged assault started with her description of the day. Early in the day of March 24, 2023, Jabbari said that she and Majors had brunch and walked around. He was “really nice, really loving and sweet.†His mood soured when they left for a play in Brooklyn that evening. In the elevator of their Chelsea apartment building, “He commented on my outfit, saying I had too many buttons undone and I had to do it up.†She did. Jabbari said she asked Majors what was wrong. Eventually, Majors admitted: He was angry that Jabbari had told a mutual friend, Priya, about some of his worrisome behavior some months prior. Jabbari had previously told jurors that she sought advice from this friend, as she was also a confidante of Majors’s. “He just said, ‘It’s your fault,’†Jabbari said. “He said, because I told Priya and now she’s told everyone … because of the conversation that I’d had, that he was going to kill himself.†Majors also allegedly remarked, “I’m a monster. I shouldn’t be here now. Everyone knows … I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to do it this time. I’m going to do it.†Jabbari testified that she was able to talk him down, as she often did.
Later in the night, Majors received a text message referring, she believed, to a D’Angelo song. He didn’t say anything. Another message popped up. “It’s not what it looks like! It’s not what it looks like!†Majors insisted. Jabbari told him to show her the messages and went to grab his phone. She turned away with his phone, and felt a heavy weight on top of her. “He was trying to pry the phone out of the hand and then when that wasn’t successful, he put my arm, my hand, behind my back,†Jabbari testified. “It just felt he was kind of twisting my arm and my hand and just trying to make me feel pain. It just felt excruciating.†Jabbari then said: “Next, I felt like a pretty hard blow across my head.†Reeling from the impact, she sat back. Majors took his phone back. He ordered the driver to pull over. When he got out, Jabbari tried to exit as well. “I was in pain, but I was just thinking: Who’s this girl?†Jurors saw video of Majors picking up Jabbari when she tries to get out of the SUV and trying to put her back inside. The video then appears to show Majors taking Jabbari by the hand, across the street. He then takes off on foot and she chases after him. “He was my boyfriend. That morning, we were talking about when we’re going to get married, the names of our children,†Jabbari said.
Jabbari’s testimony kicked off by establishing a timeline of their relationship and firming up Majors’s alleged abusive patterns. Jabbari, a dancer and movement coach, said that they met in the U.K. on September 2021 on the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. She was helping actors move in a way that would be compatible with CGI effects. During a break one day, Majors approached Jabbari and asked about her work; she asked him where he was staying. “I said, ‘Oh, it’s a beautiful area, but you should go see the whole of London — because I love London — and he said, ‘Yeah, that would be cool, or you could show me.’†After their conversation, it dawned on Jabbari that he appeared to have asked her out. They went on a date the next day. What went from a “really nice†date turned into a whirlwind romance. “From that first date, we spent every day together, maybe minus a few within the next few months,†Jabbari said. Their romance was “amazing.â€Â Majors told him he loved her early on, which was overwhelming but made Jabbari feel seen. “He’d write me poetry. I felt very loved and cared for and very seen. It felt like he understood me, and I understood him.â€
Jabbari said that she first got a sense of Majors’s temper when she visited him in Atlanta in December 2021. “He has dogs, which I love, but I’d never met these dogs before and they are protective dogs, which is something that was important to him, to have protective dogs. I was trying to understand what that meant,†Jabbari said. Jabbari told him that she shared a dog with her ex. Hearing mention of her ex, Majors got very angry and raised his voice at her for the first time. “The mention of the ex, how dare I mention him, how dare I talk about his dog, like talking about the phys appearance of my ex, talking about how it’s embarrassing for him that I dated him … his dog is pathetic, all this kind of stuff.†Jabbari knew not to mention her ex again.
A few months later, Jabbari attended Glastonbury Festival with friends in June 2022. When messages from Majors did come through due to bad cell service, he was livid. “I shouldn’t be there and how dare I go, like this is a really important week for me and you should have turned around and left …†Jabbari said of the texts she received. “I felt guilty for being there so I left, basically.†She eventually promised she’d “never go somewhere without him and without service.â€
During a July 2022 visit in Los Angeles, he “exploded†when Jabbari asked what was upsetting him. “He was full of rage and aggression — he was throwing things, shouting in my face.†Majors’s anger grew even more physical in September 2022. Jabbari and one of her closest friends went out for a drink in London and ended up back at Jabbari’s shared home with Majors. Majors appeared to be angry that Jabbari brought her girlfriend home to hang out. As a sort of peace offering, Jabbari decided to get breakfast and coffee for them the next morning. As she was walking across the park behind their house, Majors appeared and ripped the headphones out of her ears and “started stamping on them.†He warned, “You better not be in the house when I come home†and screamed in her face. She rushed back and started to pack a bag, but there wasn’t much time before Majors returned and began to throw her clothing around. Jabbari told him he could stop and that she was leaving. She went to a friend’s house and returned after Majors texted. He urged her not to tell anyone what had happened because he wanted to marry her, and this would ruin it.
“I’m a good man, a great man. I’m doing great things, not just for me…for the world.†Majors could be heard in a recording presented in court saying that Jabbari’s behavior “took away from the plan, and the plan is evident.â€
During Jabbari’s second day on the stand, she described the aftermath of the incident. Jabbari returned home, removed her shoes, grabbed water, and went to bed. She was in pain, but the events of the night hadn’t fully registered. “Again, it was kind of like this full-bodied experience of shock.†Jabbari said of her finger. “It had changed color, slightly. It was kind of red. I was really aware that something was not right.†She and Majors exchanged texts and talked on the phone: “He was kind of saying that he didn’t do anything, that he loved me.†Jabbari demanded that he come over and explain himself, but he did not. “Due to the pain that was in in my body, I realized I couldn’t lie on my right side at all,†she said. She took two over-the-counter sleeping pills, but the pain was too intense. “I noticed that the hair on my head was, like, stuck behind my ear … †She started picking at it. “It was like dried blood, I guess. I was just like, ugh, what is this?†she said. Meanwhile, her finger “turned more or less black.â€
Jabbari said that she decided to leave Majors, but as she faced the prospect of packing up her life and leaving, exhaustion kicked in. She wound up going to sleep on the bathroom floor, which was heated. Jabbari said she woke up only to find a group of male police officers looming over her. “It was so overwhelming, being a woman, half-naked, like surrounded by big men,†she recalled. “It was not the nicest feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life.†Majors, she said, was in the next room. She did not explain exactly what happened. “I know I alluded to it in the safest way I felt possible.†When pressed on what this meant, she said: “I could hear Jonathan in the next room, so I didn’t want to say exactly what happened, but I also saw this as a moment to have a bit of help in leaving the relationship.â€
“I wanted to say: ‘Help me, please,’†Jabbari said, starting to cry. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue and put her face into her hands. Jabbari said she never thought this help would be from the police. “I was just really scared, but I just desperately needed help from someone just to get me out.†Still, she feared complete candor. “I think, just things he had told me in the past of not trusting police, and what they would do to him, as a Black man, and I didn’t want to put him in that situation,†she said. Jabbari said she didn’t ask for him to be arrested. An officer said that she had to go to the hospital. The 911 call they had received, it was told to Jabbari, involved fear that she’d tried to injure herself. Amid various medical assessments, “they had told me they had arrested him and I felt very anxious about that.â€
Jabbari told jurors: “I just felt really sad, like it was my fault, you know. I felt like I should have just lied and said nothing happened. I knew he would be upset with me — I just wanted to fix it.†Jabbari denied that she’d tried to self-harm. “So I went in and met with someone, and just told them it was a situation with my boyfriend and that [he] had hurt me, and that I hadn’t done anything to myself.â€
Majors is on trial for four misdemeanor counts involving an alleged assault on Jabbari in New York in a hired Escalade this spring. Prosecutor Michael Perez said in his opening statement on December 4 that Majors roughed up his then-girlfriend in March “to cover up his infidelity.†Majors, Perez said, employed a “cruel and manipulative pattern of psychological and physical abuse†during their relationship of some two years, wielding “physical violence against her to manipulate her, control her, and physically hurt her.†His effort to cover up cheating caused Jabbari “substantial pain†and a broken finger, Perez alleged.
Majors’s defense told jurors he was the real victim during opening statements. His lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, claimed Majors was “the only person who emerged from the car bloodied or hurt. The one who was slapped, clawed, and scratched by Grace Jabbari in a way that made the driver — the only witness to this event — describe Ms. Jabbari as ‘psycho girl.’â€
This story has been updated with additional information and reporting.