The career of rising Hollywood superstar Jonathan Majors took a major body blow Monday, when two studios decided to remove him from their projects after a jury in New York found the actor guilty on the charges of assault and harassment.
Sitting in court with his girlfriend Meagan Good, Majors listened as the jury read the guilty verdict for assaulting British dancer and ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, 30, in a chauffeured car in March.
The Creed III star, 34, was found guilty of one count of misdemeanor assault in the third degree and one count of harassment, but not guilty on two other, similar charges. Had he been found guilty of all the charges, he would’ve faced a year in jail. As it stands now, he will be sentenced on Feb. 6.
Here’s the actual verdict against Jonathan Majors via @BenKochman.
It wasn’t two counts of assault – it was two not guiltys and two guiltys, the convictions being for misdemeanor assault and a harassment violation (less than a misdemeanor). https://t.co/6t5SZ9JpM7
— Meghann Cuniff (@meghanncuniff) December 18, 2023
Majors was found not guilty on the other charges — one count of assault in the third degree and one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Hours after the verdict, several media outlets reported that the Marvel Comics and Disney studios had dropped the actor, without providing elaboration.
Majors was set to play the villain in 2026’s “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty” and 2027’s “Secret Wars.” At one time, he seemed like Marvel’s future star after headlining “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” as Kang the Conqueror, a time-traveling villain who would pop up in multiple films and TV shows, the same way Thanos would show up. He also appeared in Loki season 1 and season 2. He starred in “Magazine Dreams,” which earned acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in January, but Searchlight Pictures, owned by Disney, removed the movie from its release calendar.
In the trial, however, the jury was not swayed by Majors’ Cadillac driver, Naweed Sarwar, who testified not seeing Majors hit Jabbari, or his defense attorney, Priya Chaudhry, who stated that Jabbari was the aggressor after she discovered a text from another woman on Majors’ phone. Chaudhry explained that Majors’ coat was ripped and that Jabbari was seen on multiple videos chasing after Majors for several blocks in Lower Manhattan on the night in question. During the fight over the phone, Jabbari suffered a broken finger.
However, Jabbari gave prosecutors damning evidence in text messages and recorded voicemails. Some of the text messages painted a picture of an alleged pattern of abuse in the past. Furthermore, Jabbari showed how she and Majors discussed coming up with excuses to tell the hospital to explain her head injury and subsequent sleepless nights due to the chronic pain.
“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,” Majors wrote in the texts.
Also, the jury heard the voicemail where Majors berated Jabbari for her penchant for partying and drinking and told Jabbari, who is White, that she needed to comport herself more in line with noteworthy Black women like Coretta Scott King and Michelle Obama. Majors repeatedly told Jabbari in the phone call that he is “a great man.”
