Jonathan Majors’ ex-girlfriend took the stand in a packed Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, tearfully testifying as she described her tumultuous relationship with the actor before he allegedly attacked her in the back of a chauffeured car in March.
Wearing a red plaid jacket and printed pants, Grace Jabbari, a 30-year-old choreographer who dated the Marvel star for two years, took a deep breath and smiled as she sat down before the jury. She did not look at Majors, who stared down at the defense table and adjusted his pin-stripe jacket.
“I’m sorry, I’m just a bit nervous,” Jabbari said after Judge Michael Gaffey asked her to speak up. Several times during her testimony, Jabbari stopped to cry, at one point covering her face with her hand before wiping away tears with a tissue.
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Jabbari said that the day of the March 25 assault started “really nice, loving, and sweet” after Majors surprised her with brunch before evening plans that included a Brooklyn play and dinner nearby.
But as they were heading downstairs in the elevator to take a chauffeured car to Brooklyn, Majors’ mood “shifted” after he asked her to button up her top, she said. “He stopped talking to me and I didn’t really understand why,” Jabbari said.
His strange mood continued through the play and at the start of dinner, where Majors began calling himself a monster and expressed suicidal thoughts. Jabbari said she comforted him and the pair eventually had a nice “flirty” dinner.
While driving over the Manhattan Bridge to go home, Jabbari said she leaned her head on Majors’ shoulder and watched him fiddle with his phone. She saw a conversation between a “Cleopatra” and Majors, which included a link to the 1995 D’Angelo Long, “Lady.” “I wish I was kissing you right now,” read a text sent to Majors.
“I never considered infidelity,” Jabbari said, explaining that she immediately grabbed the phone to get a better look. “I turned away from him because I wanted to look at the message, and I was trying to see the message. I could only see the phone's home screen.”
She immediately felt a painful and “heavy thud” on top of her as Majors tried to pry the phone out of her fingers, she testified. Majors then grabbed her arm, placed it behind her back, and twisted her arm and finger.
“He was trying to hurt me,” she said. “Then I felt a hard blow across my head.”
She said that Majors eventually got the phone back. Prosecutors allege that at one point during the altercation, Majors threw Jabbari “like a football” back inside the car and shoved her multiple times before running away.
Video shown in court on Tuesday showed Majors running from Jabbari, who said she chased after her then-boyfriend for at least two minutes for answers about the infidelity. She said she lost him and had to ask strangers to call her a car home. Eventually, after meeting up with Majors again and briefly arguing inside their chauffeured car, the two separated. Jabbari said she went with the strangers who had helped her, while Majors went to a hotel.
Majors has pleaded not guilty to four misdemeanor charges, including harassment and assault, in connection with the March 25 incident. He has long denied any wrongdoing, and his defense lawyers insist that he was the true victim that night.
Jabbari on Tuesday described how she met Majors in 2021 on the set of the Marvel film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. She said that, as a trained dancer, she was hired to work on movement for the film.
Their relationship progressed quickly, she said, after they went on a first date at a bar near the set. “Really kind and loving,” Jabbari said about the early days of the relationship.
She said the first time Majors raised his voice at her was during a conversation about his dogs, where she mentioned her ex-boyfriend’s pets. Majors screamed at her, telling her he was embarrassed by her past relationships and that her ex’s dog was “pathetic,” she said.
“It was the first time I felt scared of him,” she said.
Majors’ emotions boiled over several more times during their relationship, she said, including during one argument about her lack of cell reception at Glastonbury. In a July 2022 argument at Majors’ Los Angeles apartment, she said, the actor shouted and threw things at a wall.
“The first thing he threw was a candle,” she said while showing jurors a photo of the mess. After the argument, she said, Majors began to cry and express “self-hatred,” saying he was a monster, before thanking her “for her patience.”
“Every time that temper came, I was trying to learn the triggers,” she said. “Trying to not let it get to that point was my responsibility,” she added.
As Jabbari described a September 2022 argument during which Majors allegedly yanked her headphones out of her ears and screamed in her face, she began to sob and asked for a break. She returned just a few minutes later, taking a deep breath before describing how Majors once threw her out of the house before asking her to return and telling her he wanted to marry her.
Jurors heard a recording of their conversation when Jabbari returned to the house later. During that discussion, Majors told Jabbari that, like King and Obama, he needed a “great woman” to support him.“I am a great man, a great man. I am doing great things, not just for me, but for my culture,” Majors is heard yelling in the recording. “That is real.”
As the court heard the recording, Majors looked straight ahead and listened while his girlfriend, Meagan Good, sat in the row behind him and nodded.
Jabbari said their increasingly heated arguments made her feel isolated from her friends and family and dependent on Majors. She stayed in the relationship, however, because she “loved him” and was worried about his wellbeing after he threatened suicide multiple times.
She explained that the night of the incident, she had been worried after he mentioned self-harm again and reminded him that he was precious and loved. But during her opening statements, defense lawyer Priya Chaundry argued that Majors was the one who emerged from the fight with a “bloody gash, scratch, and scared,” and that Jabbari went clubbing afterward.
Jabbari testified that she decided to accompany the strangers who’d helped her out to a birthday party because she didn’t want to go home to the empty apartment she shared with Majors. “I didn't want to be alone at that point,” she said, adding that she was starting to feel pain in her fingers. “I was just trying to suppress the sadness. I felt sad so deeply in my heart. But I was also really grateful for these three people who had saved me.”
She explained that at the bar, she bought her new friends a bottle of champagne as a thank-you and danced. At that point, she said, she knew she was going to wake up sore in the morning and started to ice her finger. “I had these feelings like I would be okay without him. That independence was slightly coming back,” she said, adding that she did “some shots of tequila.”
Around 3 a.m., Jabbari said, she felt like she was in a “stronger place to go home alone and be there.”
Meanwhile, Majors went to a hotel and sent Jabbari a text intending to “permanently” end their relationship. Jabbari said she got the message while she was in a cab home, and it said that while he loved her, their relationship was no longer working.
Prosecutors say Majors later went back to his apartment, where he found Jabbari in a closet and called 911. She was eventually taken to a local hospital, where doctors said she sustained a fracture on her right finger and several bruises. She was granted an order of protection from Majors in April.
In June, Majors filed an NYPD domestic violence counterclaim against Jabbari, alleging that he was the victim that night and that she stole things from his apartment. Jabbari received a desk appearance ticket on misdemeanor charges in connection with the counterclaim, but the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against her for lack of “prosecutorial merit.”
Jabbari is set to continue testifying under direct examination on Wednesday.
