Jonathan Majors’ ex-girlfriend testified Wednesday that she didn’t want to involve the police after he allegedly attacked her in March and that she regretted getting him in trouble.
On her second day on the witness stand, Grace Jabbari, 30, tearfully spoke about the aftermath of the incident that led to Majors’ arrest. She told jurors that Majors had previously warned her not to trust the police because they would “do something to him as a black man.”
“I didn’t want to put him in that situation,” she said.
It was the majors, not Jabbari, who called the police the next morning. His defense attorney, Priya Chaudhry, said in her opening statement that Majors did so out of concern for Jabbari’s mental state. The Majors had spent the night before in a hotel and returned to their apartment in Chelsea to find Jabbari sleeping on the floor.
Jabbari testified that she woke up in the face of “a lot of officers” and was hesitant, but eventually told officers that she had suffered injuries from Majors.
She remembered feeling anxious after his arrest. “I felt like it was my fault,” she said. “I should have lied and said nothing happened so he wouldn’t get in trouble or get upset with me. I wanted to fix it.”
Majors, a star of “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” is on trial on three misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment. If convicted, he could face up to a year in prison.
The initial charges included strangulation, but Jabbari testified that she asked for the charges to be dropped because she “didn’t understand the context.”
The domestic violence lawsuit stems from an incident that occurred as Majors and Jabbari drove a private car from Brooklyn to their Chelsea apartment on March 25. Jabbari testified Tuesday that she saw a text message on Majors’ phone from another woman that said, “I wish I was kissing you now.” According to Jabbari, she took the phone from his hand to to find out who had sent the message and he forcibly retrieved it. According to Jabbari, this caused bruising, swelling and “excruciating” pain. Jurors were shown photos of Jabbari’s swollen finger and a cut behind her ear that she sustained the day after the alleged assault.
Jabbari said the majors found her sleeping on the floor because she was exhausted. The night before, she said she had taken two over-the-counter sleeping pills but was still having difficulty resting due to physical discomfort.
“I couldn’t lie on the right side of my body,” she told jurors. “It hurt everywhere. I’m used to muscle pain; Pain inflicted in other ways [as a dancer]. That felt so uncomfortable.”
She said she noticed in the morning that her finger had turned black and there was dried blood behind her ear. Jabbari told the jury: “I have made a clear decision that this is not a good relationship. I wanted to get out of the apartment. [But] I needed a few more hours of sleep. I could barely move my body.” She took a break from packing and lay down on the floor before falling asleep.
The defense argued that Jabbari made up the allegations to get revenge after the Majors split. “This is about the end of a relationship, not a crime … at least not one committed by Mr. Majors,” Chaudhry said in her opening statement. She also claimed it was Jabbari who attacked Majors in the vehicle that night, ripping off two buttons from his coat and the bag “with her bare hands” – not the other way around.
While Jabbari gave her hour-long testimony, 34-year-old Majors sat at the defense table in the New York Criminal Court. The only time he spoke up was to assure the judge that he would abide by the protective order, meaning the two parties could have no direct contact or contact with third parties. His current girlfriend, Meagan Good, was present every day of the trial.
During the cross-examination that began on Wednesday afternoon, Chaudhry asked Jabbari about Majors’ upbringing as well as her two-year relationship history. They met in August 2021 on the London set of Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where Majors played a key role as an actor and Jabbari worked as a movement trainer. Jabbari, a professional dancer, lives in the United Kingdom.
The defense also brought up a September 2022 audio recording that was played during the domestic violence trial on Tuesday. Majors was heard describing himself as a “great man” doing “great things for my culture and for the world” and demanded that Jabbari behave like Michelle Obama or Coretta Scott King – the wives of Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr.
Chaudhry tried to give the jury some context to explain why Majors insulted Jabbari during the recording. She asked Jabbari if her drinking habits had been a “constant source of tension” in the relationship.
“He was mad at me and used my drinking as an excuse,” Jabbari said.
Earlier in the day, Jabbari became emotional and briefly left the room to compose herself after speaking about the impact of the trial on her life.
“I’m a very private person,” she told the jury. “It was very difficult to see a lot of unwanted attention. I like to remain silent.”