Jonathan Majors was at the height of his acting career in early 2023. He had kicked off the year in January by wowing critics at Sundance with his performance in the indie film Magazine Dreams; early predictions were putting him in contention for the Oscar for Best Actor. In February, he appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as Kang the Conqueror and was set to play the new main villain in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, ushering in a post-Thanos Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the beginning of March, he got a box-office hit under his belt with Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut, Creed III.
But his March 2023 arrest on domestic-violence charges and subsequent conviction for misdemeanor assault and harassment interrupted the rising trajectory of his career, costing him his Marvel job and delaying the release of Magazine Dreams. All that success had represented the culmination of a decade of work: Majors first enrolled at the prestigious Yale School of Drama in fall 2013. He filmed his onscreen debut in ABC’s miniseries When We Rise while he was still a student and starred in a steady stream of projects — including The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Da 5 Bloods, and HBO’s Lovecraft Country (which earned him an Emmy nomination) — after graduating with his M.F.A. He developed a reputation in Hollywood for a blend of Method-acting styles, telling Men’s Health that he does “whatever it takes for me, whatever it takes” while filming.
The mentality extends to Majors’s efforts in regaining his former status in the industry. Majors has maintained his innocence despite the outcome of his trial by jury, telling ABC in 2024, “My hands have never struck a woman. Ever.” When asked on March 19 about Rolling Stone’s recent release of an audio recording of him allegedly admitting to strangling Jabbari during a 2022 altercation, the man of faith told TV host Sherri Shepherd he can’t speak about it but “God has a plan.” Below, a timeline of his career through the controversy, from Grace Jabbari’s initial allegations to Majors’s prayers for a Hollywood return ahead of the March 21 release of Magazine Dreams.
Majors is arrested after a ‘domestic dispute’
March 25, 2023: Police respond to a morning 911 call at a Manhattan apartment, where Majors’s ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari tells officers she has been assaulted. Jabbari, a movement coach who worked with Majors on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, is not initially publicly identified. According to the NYPD, a preliminary investigation finds that a “33-year-old male was involved in a domestic dispute with a 30-year-old female.” Majors is arrested on charges of strangulation, assault, and harassment. Police say Jabbari sustained “minor injuries to her head and neck” and was taken to a local hospital. A representative for Majors says in a statement to multiple outlets that the actor “has done nothing wrong,” adding, “We look forward to clearing his name and clearing this up.”
March 26, 2023: Majors is arraigned. The misdemeanor criminal charges include six counts of assault in the third degree, three counts of attempted assault in the third degree, one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree, and one count of harassment in the second degree. Per Variety, the complaint alleges that Majors struck her “about the face with an open hand, causing substantial pain and a laceration behind her ear” and “put his hand on her neck, causing bruising and substantial pain.”
Majors’s attorney, Priya Chaudhry, releases a statement maintaining her client’s innocence and claiming that he is actually “the victim of an altercation with a woman he knows.” Chaudhry says there is evidence to support this, including “video footage from the vehicle where this episode took place, witness testimony from the driver and others who both saw and heard the episode,” and “two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations.” Chaudhry alleges that Jabbari “was having an emotional crisis, for which she was taken to a hospital yesterday” and affirms that Majors “expect these charges to be dropped soon.”
The Army Times reports on the same day that the U.S. Army is halting a multimillion-dollar recruitment campaign starring Majors. The Army is “deeply concerned by the allegations surrounding [Majors’s] arrest,” a spokesperson for the Army Enterprise Marketing Office says, adding that while the actor is “innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete.”
March 30, 2023: Majors’s crisis publicist, Andrew Bourke — who is married to Majors’s attorney, Chaudhry — releases screenshots of purported text messages from Jabbari to Majors. “They assured me that you won’t be charged,” one screenshot reads. “They said they had to arrest you as protocol when they saw the injuries on me and they knew we had a fight. I’m so angry that they did. And I’m sorry you’re in this position. Will make sure nothing happens about this. I love you.” Elsewhere in the exchange, the sender notes that she told police this was “not an attack” and that it was her “fault” for trying to grab his phone. “I also said to tell the judge to know that the origin of the [911] call was to do with me collapsing and passing out,” another message continues, “and your worry as my partner due to our communication prior.” Chaudhry also shares these alleged screenshots with several media outlets.
The industry cuts ties and Majors files a counter-complaint
April 17, 2023: Talent-management company Entertainment 360 and PR firm the Lede Company both cut ties with Majors, Deadline reports. Majors and Valentino have also “mutually agreed” that he will no longer attend the Met Gala in May as one of the fashion house’s guests.
April 18, 2023: Per Deadline, a film adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel The Man in My Basement has dropped Majors, and he is no longer “circling” a part in an unannounced Otis Redding biopic. The Texas Rangers MLB team is reportedly also pulling an upcoming ad campaign that featured him.
April 19, 2023: Variety reports that “multiple” alleged abuse victims of Majors have come forward and are cooperating with the Manhattan DA’s office. According to Variety, the Gotham Film and Media Institute’s executive director announces in a same-day note to the board that Majors is stepping down from both the board and his work with Gotham’s Sidney Poitier Initiative.
April 20, 2023: Majors’s attorney, Chaudhry, alleges in a filing obtained by “Page Six” that Jabbari was “hitting, scratching and attacking” Majors over infidelity claims during the March vehicle incident as he “begged” the driver to let him out. Chaudhry claims that he got out of the car at one point, but that the alleged assault against him continued when he got back in. The filing points to video of Jabbari at a club hours after the dispute, suggesting that she was “perfectly fine and completely uninjured” while Majors was “hiding in a hotel.” According to Chaudhry, Jabbari was “angry and surprised” when Majors broke up with her over text while she was still out. Majors allegedly later returned to his apartment to find her “unconscious on the floor of a closet” with injuries that she claimed he had caused.
April 27, 2023: A judge grants Jabbari a full temporary order of protection against Majors, meaning that he must stay away from her and not abuse, harass, or threaten her. “This is standard in cases such as this, and we consented because Mr. Majors wants nothing to do with the woman who assaulted him,” Chaudhry responds in a statement to People. The attorney adds that his legal team has provided the district attorney with a board-certified emergency-medicine doctor and trauma specialist’s “forensic medical opinion” that Jabbari’s injuries “did not come from Mr. Majors (and could not have come from the way the woman described).”
May 9, 2023: Manhattan prosecutors file an updated account of the incident. Majors is no longer accused of grabbing Jabbari’s neck, but she maintains that he slapped her. According to the new charging details obtained by Insider, he allegedly hit her on the ear and caused a cut, pushed her into the car with both hands, and put her arm behind her back before twisting her right forearm and right middle finger, “causing substantial pain.”
Majors makes a brief appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court via Zoom, only speaking to confirm that he consents to being there virtually instead of in person. “Instead of dismissing the allegations in the face of the woman’s clear lies, the DA has adjusted the charges to match the woman’s new lies,” Chaudhry says outside the court, per Deadline. “To be clear, there are no new charges against Mr. Majors.” Without expanding, the attorney adds that the legal team has obtained “even more video evidence” of his innocence but is “hesitant to share it, for fear the DA will tip the woman off to change her story again.” She also suggests that racial bias was at play, alleging that a white officer taunted Majors and that none of the white police officers present investigated Majors’s injuries.
May 13, 2023: TMZ breaks the news that Majors is in a “fairly new” relationship with actress Meagan Good, citing an eyewitness who saw the pair on a date at the Alamo Drafthouse in Los Angeles the weekend before. People confirms that the pair are a couple.
June 20, 2023: Majors holds both a Bible and Good’s hand as he arrives at an in-person court hearing, where a judge sets an August 3 trial date. (The start date is ultimately delayed several times to extend the discovery process.)
June 21, 2023: Majors walks into the NYPD Chinatown precinct to give officers his own account of the incident. Per a domestic-incident report and sworn affidavit obtained by Insider, he alleges that a “drunk and hysterical” Jabbari caused him pain and bleeding by scratching, slapping, and grabbing at his face.
June 22, 2023: Majors files his own domestic-violence complaint against Jabbari over the allegations he shared with police the day before.
June 24, 2023: According to the New York Post, the NYPD issues an investigation card, also known as an I-card, for Jabbari. This tells police that there is probable cause to arrest her, but it is not an arrest warrant.
June 26, 2023: Chaudhry confirms in Insider’s report that an I-card was issued but later deactivated.
Majors faces more allegations
June 29, 2023: A lengthy investigation published by Rolling Stone levels multiple new allegations of abuse against Majors. The claims include that he was abusive to at least two exes. He is accused of strangling one ex, while the other describes their relationship as “emotional torture.” Dustin A. Pusch, another of Majors’s attorneys, said Majors “vehemently denies” the allegations. The actor’s legal team sent testimonies from six of his past romantic partners, but three of the women reportedly told Rolling Stone that they had never approved the release of such statements, with another actually denying the statement credited to her as “not truthful.” Only one woman, who dated Majors from age 13 to 18, consented to making public her statement calling Majors “sweet, kind and gentle.” (The sixth woman did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.)
The report also claims that he treated crew members on recent films poorly, allegedly making costume-department members for his 2022 movie Devotion cry in a “borderline abusive” situation. He is also accused of pushing a crew member and physically intimidating another on the set of Magazine Dreams. Pusch denies these allegations and notes that Majors’s Method-acting style “can be misconstrued as rudeness at times.” Former Yale alums also claim to Rolling Stone that Majors was involved in multiple physical confrontations as a student, including during scenes; Pusch also denies these allegations.
July 21, 2023: Marvel releases the trailer for Loki season two, which still stars Majors as Kang variant Victor Timely. (The show’s executive producer tells Variety later that year that there had been no discussions about removing Majors because the situation was developing and it felt “hasty to do anything without knowing how all of this plays out.”)
August 3, 2023: Good accompanies Majors to a hearing for his second in-person court appearance. They are once again photographed arriving at Manhattan Criminal Court while holding hands and both wearing sunglasses.
September 12, 2023: Majors reportedly steps in to break up a fight between two teenage girls outside of Hollywood High School, which is across from an In-N-Out where he was eating, TMZ reports. TMZ finds him hours after the fight and asks if he just wanted to make sure that nobody got hurt. “Of course,” Majors responds with a laugh. When asked to send a message of advice to the students involved, he says, “Stay cool.”
September 14, 2023: TMZ posts footage of Majors intervening in the fight. The video prompts several memes riffing on Majors’s newsboy cap and the way he put both hands out in an attempt to broker peace.
September 16, 2023: Chaudhry denies online suspicion that the fight was a PR stunt, calling it “absurd” and telling TMZ that a new angle of the fight proves that it was not staged.
October 6, 2023: Loki season two drops on Disney+.
October 25, 2023: A judge denies Majors’s request to dismiss the case, and a trial date is set for November 29. On the same day, Jabbari is also arrested and charged with assault and criminal mischief, the NYPD confirms to People.
October 26, 2023: The Manhattan DA’s office has “officially declined to prosecute the case against Grace Jabbari because it lacks prosecutorial merit.” Jabbari’s attorney, Ross Kramer, says in a statement to People that it is “unfortunate and re-traumatizing when a survivor of intimate partner violence is forced to endure an arrest, but Ms. Jabbari is an extremely strong and resilient person who is determined to move forward.”
October 27, 2023: Magazine Dreams, the bodybuilding drama starring Majors that previously wowed crowds at Sundance, is removed from the theatrical-release calendar. According to The Hollywood Reporter, this decision is unrelated to the ongoing actors strike.
Majors’s trial by jury begins
November 29, 2023: Majors arrives at New York Criminal Court for the first day of his trial while holding Good’s hand and a Bible. Both of them are dressed in dark colors for the occasion.
Per Deadline, prosecutors allege in opening statements that Majors left Jabbari with a fractured finger, pain from a twisted arm, and a laceration behind one ear while attempting to get his phone back. Allegedly, Jabbari had grabbed the phone after seeing a text from another woman. Meanwhile, the defense claims that after “a seconds-long altercation over a text,” an uninjured Jabbari went out for a night of partying and had no explanation for her subsequent injuries until police asked if Majors was responsible. Chaudhry says Jabbari “made these false statements to take away everything he has spent his whole life working for.”
December 5, 2023: Jabbari takes the stand to detail what prosecutors claim was systemic abuse by Majors. CBS reports that Jabbari is in tears as she describes the relationship, alleging that Majors once threw glass candles at her head, gave her the silent treatment for days because she attended a music festival, and berated her for mentioning an ex. In a recording played for the jury, Majors is reportedly heard yelling at Jabbari and calling himself “a great man.” (In part of the audio later released by TMZ, he appears to criticize her for coming home drunk and says he needs her to act like Michelle Obama or Coretta Scott King.)
December 8, 2023: Text messages in which Majors appears to encourage Jabbari not to seek treatment for an injury she sustained after the pair had an argument in September 2022 are presented to the jury. “I fear you have no perspective of what could happen if you go to the hospital,” he said. “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.” Jabbari assured him that she would say she bumped her head, asking, “[W]hy would I tell them what really happened when it’s clear I want to be with you?” In the conversation, Majors threatened suicide and called himself a “monster.” Jabbari cries as she reads some of the messages aloud herself, which are provided as context for why she initially told emergency personnel that she didn’t know what happened to her during the March incident.
December 11, 2023: Naveed Sarwar, the private driver of the car that Majors and Jabbari were in during the March 2023 incident at the center of the case, testifies. In opening statements, the defense claims Sarwar had called Jabbari a “psycho girl.” But per People, when on the stand speaking through an Urdu translator, Sarwar does not repeat that assessment. He recalls Majors getting out of the car after he and Jabbari fought and later “pushing” her back into the car in an attempt “to get rid of her.” Sarwar adds that he kept his eyes on the road but had “the feeling the girl had hit the boy,” though the judge reminds him that he can only speak to what he saw. “He was not doing anything,” he says. “She was doing everything.”
December 13, 2023: Some evidence that was previously submitted to the court becomes publicly available, including surveillance footage from the incident at the center of the case. The footage shows Majors and Jabbari getting out of the vehicle. He picks her up before what prosecutors describe as him shoving her back into the car. They get out again, and Majors eventually runs away. Jabbari pursues him for at least a couple of blocks before the pair split up, Jabbari going to a club and Majors going to a hotel. Per TMZ, other evidence submitted includes photos of Jabbari’s injuries and a video of Majors calling 911 from the lobby of his apartment and saying that he suspects Jabbari has tried to commit suicide. He then leads responding officers up to where she is seen lying in his closet.
December 18, 2023: After a three-week trial, the jury finds Major guilty of reckless third-degree assault inside the car and second-degree harassment for the altercation outside of the car. Chaudhry, who pointed to racism during her closing statement, maintains Majors’s innocence after the verdict. Given that the jurors did not find him guilty of intentional third-degree assault, she expresses gratitude in a statement that they “did not believe Grace Jabbari’s story of what happened in the SUV” but expresses disappointment in the rest of the jury’s decision. “Mr. Majors still has faith in the process and looks forward to fully clearing his name,” she adds. On the same day, Deadline reports that Marvel has fired Majors.
January 8, 2024: Majors maintains his innocence in his first interview since his conviction. “I have never hit a woman,” he tells ABC. “I have never. My hands have never struck a woman. Ever.” He recalls hearing the verdict and questioning how it was “possible based off the prosecution’s evidence, let alone our evidence.” The man convicted of reckless assault claims that he was reckless only with Jabbari’s “heart, not her body.”
January 12, 2024: Deadline reports that 48 Hours in Vegas, the working title for a movie about Dennis Rodman’s two-day adventure in Las Vegas during the 1998 NBA finals, has dropped Majors from the lead role. Lionsgate is no longer developing the project.
January 16, 2024: Searchlight lets go of the rights to Magazine Dreams, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The filmmakers will reportedly try to find a new buyer.
A new round of allegations and legal action
February 8, 2024: Two more exes accuse Majors of abuse in a New York Times report. Emma Duncan, who was engaged to Majors from 2015 to 2019, alleges that he was emotionally and physically abusive and had threatened during arguments to kill her or ensure that she would be incapable of having children. Chaudhry denies the allegations of physical abuse and threats and alleges that Duncan had slapped or hit Majors across the face several times. However, the attorney acknowledges the pair had “many serious arguments” as a couple and noted that Majors is “choosing to take responsibility for his own part in that toxic relationship, focusing on himself, and addressing his lifelong depression.”
Maura Hooper, who dated Majors from 2013 to 2015 while they were classmates at Yale, accuses him of emotional abuse. She alleges to the Times that Majors threatened suicide after she found out he was cheating and called her a year after they broke up to call her a “whore,” tell her to kill herself, and make an apparent reference to an abortion Hooper had during their relationship by stating that he would “rip you out of my heart the way they ripped our baby out of you.” Chaudhry says Majors was “embarrassed by some of his jealous behavior” during the relationship, adding that the actor “regrets saying hurtful things” during the “mutually intense” phone conversation but “does not recall the specific things he said.”
The report also includes separate allegations that Majors was confrontational with women who worked on the Lovecraft Country set. Allegedly, he called one to a cramped space on set to tell her she was “not welcome.” Another claimed that he got angry at her when she informed him of a schedule change, later getting “really up in my face” and making a derogatory racial remark about her looks. Chaudhry counters that “countless” women in the entertainment industry “can attest to his professionalism” and denies the racial remark. The Times reports that Majors followed HBO’s advice and reluctantly apologized after three women made complaints, but Chaudhry claims Majors was never told “that anyone objected to his behavior.”
March 19, 2024: Per The Hollywood Reporter, Jabbari files a civil defamation lawsuit against Majors, who has continued to maintain his innocence, in New York federal court. In the filing — which also alleges assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and malicious persecution — Jabbari accuses him of a pattern of pervasive domestic abuse that began in 2021, escalated to physical attacks in 2022, and lasted until 2023. She claims that she informed Majors’s management team of his behavior after suffering “serious injuries” in a September 2022 attack.
March 20, 2024: Chaudhry says the lawsuit is “no surprise” in a statement to NPR that notes Majors is preparing counterclaims against Jabbari.
April 8, 2024: Four months after he was convicted, Majors is sentenced in his criminal case to a 52-week “in-person batterers intervention program.” The maximum sentence for his charges was 364 days in jail. Prosecutors previously requested domestic-violence programming or a six-month jail sentence if Majors didn’t comply.
June 20, 2024: Majors books a lead role in Martin Villeneuve’s upcoming supernatural revenge thriller Merciless, Deadline reports.
June 21, 2024: Majors cries as he accepts the Perseverance Award from Iyanla Vanzant at the Hollywood Unlocked Impact Awards in Los Angeles. “As a Black man in the criminal-justice system, I felt anger, I felt sadness, hurt, surprise,” he says in his acceptance speech. “When they snatched me up out of my apartment in handcuffs, I didn’t feel like all that. I didn’t feel like Jonathan Majors, Mr. Creed, Mr. Kang. … I felt like a little scared, weak boy.” He adds that the “harsh reality” is that for Black people, guilt and innocence “often have little to do with the outcome” and goes on to thank Will Smith, Tyler Perry, David Oyelowo, Deon and Roxanne Taylor, Courtney B. Vance, and Whoopi Goldberg for supporting him.
July 27, 2024: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is now Avengers: Doomsday with Robert Downey Jr. officially set to star as Doctor Doom and replace Kang as the villain of the renamed 2026 film. (Majors tells TMZ a couple days later that he’s “heartbroken” by Marvel’s new direction because he loves Kang, but adds that Doctor Doom is “wicked.”)
October 2, 2024: Briarcliff Entertainment — the same studio that bought Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice when other buyers balked — acquires the domestic distribution rights to Magazine Dreams and plans to release the film in the first quarter of 2025, Deadline reports.
November 17, 2024: Majors and Good announce that they are engaged at the EBONY Power 100 Gala in Los Angeles, People confirms. The pair reportedly first met at the annual event several years before they began dating. Good tells TMZ the following month that Majors proposed to her in Paris.
November 22, 2024: Jabbari agrees to dismiss her civil suit against Majors with prejudice, meaning that it can’t be filed again. “We are happy to announce that the meritorious lawsuit Grace Jabbari filed against Jonathan Majors was successfully settled,” Jabbari’s attorney, Brad Edwards, says in a statement to NPR. “It took tremendous courage for Grace to pursue this case. We are happy to have helped her close this chapter favorably so that she can move forward and begin to finally heal.”
Majors begins promoting Magazine Dreams
January 29, 2025: Briarcliff Entertainment shares the trailer for Magazine Dreams, now set to arrive in theaters on March 21.
March 11, 2025: Majors is greeted with applause when he surprises the audience before an early screening of Magazine Dreams in Los Angeles. “Good to see you,” several people call out. “I’m glad you guys said that, ’cause you’re about to see a lot of me,” he replies.
March 14, 2025: In his first major print interview since his conviction, Majors tells The Hollywood Reporter that, in addition to the domestic-violence program he was sentenced to, he has gone to therapy and “reengaged” with his pastor. As a result, he says he began to process sexual abuse that he allegedly experienced “from both men and women from the time I was 9,” which helped him examine his behavior in relationships. “There are no excuses, but by getting help, you begin to understand things about yourself,” he says.
Majors says he cannot comment directly on Jabbari’s domestic-violence allegations. However, he suggests that he does feel responsible for the direction his life has taken. After noting that there “has to be accountability for writing your own story,” he says it is not a “beneficial” narrative to “blame the world,” “hate yourself,” or “deny everything” after having a “struggle.” Instead, his goal is to “learn, metabolize, [and] grow.” Whoopi Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, and Michael B. Jordan — who have all worked with Majors — praise him in the piece and express support for his future in the industry.
Majors affirms that he “absolutely” wants to make more movies. “But that’s not my call,” he says. “I don’t have a studio. And I’ve given up control.” When asked to share a message with the entertainment industry, Majors says, “I would tell them I’m still learning, and I would thank them for participating in my growth.”
March 17, 2025: Rolling Stone publishes a recording allegedly taken days after the September 2022 incident mentioned in Jabbari’s civil lawsuit against Majors. “I’m ashamed I’ve ever– I’ve never [been] aggressive with a woman before,” Majors appears to say. “I’ve never aggressed a woman — I aggressed you.” Jabbari then accuses him of strangling her and pushing her against a car, to which Majors replies, “Yes, all those things are under ‘aggressed,’ yeah. That’s never happened to me.” Jabbari asks if this happened because he felt that she made a sarcastic comment, and he responds that “clearly, it’s more than that.” Jabbari says, “Something inside of you,” and Majors agrees, “Yeah, towards you.”
On the same day, Majors hosts a special Los Angeles screening of Magazine Dreams with director-writer Elijah Bynum. Majors and Bynum participate in a Q&A moderated by actor David Oyelowo, and Good reportedly also attends the event, according to an Instagram post from executive producer Andrew Blau.
March 18, 2025: Majors and Good get married. Entertainment Tonight is the first to break the news of the wedding ceremony in their backyard that was officiated by his mother, a Methodist pastor.
March 19, 2025: Majors tears up as he confirms news of his marriage while on Sherri Shepherd’s daytime talk show, Sherri, to promote Magazine Dreams. Shepherd says she knows Majors can’t speak about his legal battles but asks how he felt as everything unfolded. “It’s been two years of growth, healing, accountability about who I was, where I was, what I was doing, where my mind was at, where my spirit was at,” Majors replies, adding he told Good a couple nights ago that he feels “different” and loves the man he is now.
Majors references the Bible and his faith multiple times during the interview. When asked how he felt about the Rolling Stone recording that leaked ahead of the release of Magazine Dreams, Majors says, “God has a plan. And sometimes you just throw your hands up. I can’t speak about it, you know, but I do know there’s a plan. And I’ve let go of control.”