A Breakdown of Jonathan Majors' Arrest & Domestic Violence Case
Here is everything you need to know regarding Jonathan Majors' arrest following a domestic dispute in New York City, and what the victim has said since.
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Jonathan Majors was on top of the world—until he wasn’t.
Earlier this year, the actor had two back-to-back movies reach No. 1 at the box office with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Creed III, in which he played incredibly convincing villains while also garnering the adoration of millions of fans through his performances and his personality during interviews.
All of that came crashing down in late March when it was reported that Majors had been arrested on the charge of physically attacking a woman in a domestic dispute. The authorities took Majors into custody while the woman who called them was brought to the hospital to be treated for visible injuries. The internet was set ablaze when the news broke, but his lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, said there was evidence on her client’s side. “Jonathan Majors is completely innocent,” the criminal defense lawyer stated.
In text messages Majors’s team released to TMZ, the woman, who she was reportedly dating at the time, told him she was “at fault,” because she had reached for his phone and said she asked the authorities not to press charges against him.
While some people expressed concern about the woman’s safety and well-being, others wondered what this means for the rising star’s career. While that is the least concerning aspect of the ordeal, Marvel’s future hinges on Majors’ role as Kang the Conqueror. Now with his involvement up in the air and complete silence from Disney and Marvel, there is no telling what will happen next. His film Magazine Dreams is also slated for a December release.
It’s been nearly a month since the incident and there have been no recent updates regarding the case. As we await the actor’s response or any new information from his attorney or the authorities, here is everything that has gone down since Majors’ arrest and what we know so far.
Jonathan Majors gets into an alleged altercation with a woman
Date: March 25, 2023
TMZ reported that Majors got into an altercation with a woman on March 25. According to the outlet, the woman, who was later identified as Majors’ girlfriend, told police that he physically attacked her during a domestic dispute. Insiders told TMZ that she had visible injuries on her body, including redness and marks on her face. She was later taken to a hospital and was said to be in stable condition.
Law enforcement received the call around 11 a.m. The woman told police she and Majors got into an argument after leaving a bar in Brooklyn. Reportedly, while on their way home, Majors’ girlfriend was said to have seen text messages between the actor and another woman, and she quickly confronted him. Majors then grabbed his girlfriend’s hand and slapped her before putting his hands around her neck. The two spent the night apart, and the woman reported the attack the following morning.
Date: March 25, 2023
Majors was arrested the same day in New York. The NYPD later released a statement about Majors’ arrest. “The victim informed police she was assaulted,” a spokesperson for the NYPD said in a statement to the Associated Press. “Officers placed the 33-year-old male into custody without incident. The victim sustained minor injuries to her head and neck and was removed to an area hospital in stable condition.”
Majors was spotted leaving a New York City court with a baseball hat with the words “Freedom Freedom.”
Date: March 26, 2023
Majors was arraigned on multiple charges, according to Variety. He was charged with several 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.
"The DA’s office says a judge released Majors on his own recognizance and granted a limited order of protection,” the outlet reported. This decision came after more details emerged in the woman’s complaint: It said that the actor “[struck] her about the face with an open hand, causing substantial pain and a laceration behind her ear,” and that he “put his hand on her neck, causing bruising and substantial pain.”
Majors’ lawyer shares a statement
Date: March 26, 2023
Following Majors’ arrest, attorney Priya Chaudhry maintained her client’s innocence. "We are quickly gathering and presenting evidence to the district attorney with the expectation that all charges will be dropped imminently," Chaudhry said in a statement. "This evidence includes 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 most importantly, two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations."
Chaudhry also mentioned that the woman sent text messages to the actor, detailing the incident: "On that same day, only seven and nine hours later, the woman sent text messages to Mr. Majors admitting that she was the one who used physical force against him. She also disavowed any allegations that he had done anything to her and confirmed that Mr. Majors called 911 because of her mental condition."
The U.S. Army pauses Majors’ campaign
Date: March 26, 2023
The U.S. Army paused Majors’ “Be All You Can Be” ad campaign following his arrest. The ads were scheduled to run during the NCAA Final Four games on the last weekend of March. “The U.S. Army is aware of the arrest of Jonathan Majors, and we are deeply concerned by the allegations surrounding his arrest,” the public affairs chief for the U.S. Army Enterprise Marketing Office said in a statement via The Hollywood Reporter. “While Mr. Majors is innocent until proven guilty, prudence dictates that we pull our ads until the investigation into these allegations is complete.”
The campaign was broadcasted twice before the agency pulled the commercial, and the Army was rushing to put together new recruiting ads in wake of Majors’ arrest. Head of Army marketing Maj. Gen. Alex Finn said it would pause the ads or use updated versions of older commercials in order to avoid a potential $70 million loss in advertisement buy. “A majority of that content did not contain our main narrator. So we have a ton of content to go back to, to create basically new commercials, new ads, if we need to,” Fink said at the time. “The campaign is full steam ahead.”
The ads featuring Majors were slated to appear on TV, social media, and physical and digital billboards.
Date: March 26, 2023
Majors’ lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, told the Los Angeles Times that the woman had retracted her initial statements about being physically assaulted by Majors. The attorney said her team had received “two written statements from the woman recanting these allegations.” Chaudhry had also said that there was video evidence that proves her client’s innocence. The actor’s attorney said the woman was having “an emotional crisis, for which she was taken to a hospital yesterday.” The Times report did not include the statements or footage in question.
Date: March 27, 2023
Following his arrest, the actor was charged with multiple misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment two days after he was arrested in NYC. Majors was charged with three counts of assault in the third degree, aggravated harassment in the second degree, three counts of attempted assault in the third degree and harassment in the second degree, Variety reported.
According to documents obtained by People from the Manhattan District Attorney's office, Majors hit the woman “about the face with an open hand, causing substantial pain and a laceration behind her ear.” He also reportedly caused “bruising and substantial pain” by grabbing her hand and neck.
Date: March 30, 2023
Days after Majors’ arrest, his lawyer released screenshots to TMZ of a text message conversation that reportedly took place between her client and the woman following the incident the weekend prior. In the texts, the woman he is accused of assaulting appears to take the blame for the fight and said the authorities didn’t have her “blessing” to press charges. "They assured me that you wouldn't be charged," the screenshot shows her writing. "They said they had to arrest you as protocol when they saw the injuries on me and they knew we had a fight.”
She continued to explain how she was at “fault” for attempting to take his cell phone and said she reiterated that to the authorities, as well as saying Majors placed the 911 out of concern for her health after she passed out. “I read the paper they gave me about strangulation, and I said point-blank this did not occur and should be removed immediately,” the text states. “The judge is definitely going to be told this.”
Date: April 17, 2023
Public relations firm, The Lede Company, has parted ways with Majors amid his multiple misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment. The firm decided to “step away” from the Creed III star last month, according to Deadline. Majors’ management company Entertainment 360 has also stopped working with the actor.
Date: April 19, 2023
After the departure of The Lede Company and Entertainment 360, Deadline reports that Majors was dropped from a handful of projects, including a film adaptation of Walter Mosely’s The Man in My Basement, a Major League Baseball ad campaign for the Texas Rangers, and an Otis Redding biopic (approved by his estate).
Date: April 27, 2023
The victim who initially brought allegations against Majors is granted a full temporary order of projection, the legal term for a restraining order. This version will last until the full court hearing, upon which a judge could extend it again.
Date: May 09, 2023
In a statement provided to Complex, Majors’ lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, said, “We have provided the District Attorney with irrefutable evidence that the woman is lying, including video proof showing nothing happened, especially not where she claimed. We did this with the explicit promise from the DA that they would not ‘fix’ their case and change it as we proved the woman is lying.” Chaudhry went on to add that the allegations are a “false case” and a “witch hunt.”
Date: June 20, 2023
Majors appeared at Manhattan court in late June (alongside new girlfriend Meagan Good) for a hearing around the case wherein he acknowledged he’d need to return on August 3 for the start of his trial.
During the appearance, Chaudhry stated her team submitted “additional evidence” in support of Majors to the District Attorney in hopes that the DA would “dismiss all charges against Mr. Majors immediately.”
Date: June 27, 2023
Majors filed a counter-claim against the victim, stating he was a victim of domestic violence. The suit alleges that ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari scratched and hit him during the argument that eventually led to the March 25 arrest of Majors. During that arrest, Majors also claimed that Jabbari attacked him previously, but he never filed any police reports.
Date: June 29, 2023
The NYPD declared they had “probable cause” to arrest Jabbari. Insiders told The New York Times, who broke the story, that the evidence was compelling enough that police issued documentation to take Jabbari into custody on alleged third-degree assault.
On the heels of this news came an investigative report from Rolling Stone documenting behavior of “extreme abuse” over nearly a decade. Throughout a staggering 40 interviews, the story alleges that Majors had a pattern of emotional, mental, and physical abuse. Many of the interviews were conducted anonymously—with one source stating they couldn’t talk about their experience because Majors forced them to sign a non-disclosure agreement about their time together.
The story contained corroboration from Majors’ fellow students at Yale's David Geffen School of Drama that the actor was physically abusive to one partner, emotionally abusive to another, and “would terrorize the people that he had dated.”
Majors’ attorney, Dustin A. Pusch, denied the Rolling Stone report in a statement.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.