Jonathan Majors’s Ex-Girlfriend Said He Called Himself a ‘Monster’
Jonathan Majors’s ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari repeatedly cried — dabbing her eyes with a tissue — as she testified about his violent outbursts during the actor’s Manhattan domestic-violence trial on December 5. While on the stand, Jabbari described how Majors’s intense, early professions of love toward her were quickly replaced by rage. “He said that he was a monster and wanted to kill himself and had actions in place to do so,” Jabarri recalled. She said guilt and fear for his well-being deterred her from leaving the controlling relationship. “He’d scare me when he said things like, ‘It’s in place. It’s in motion.’” Majors did not appear to react as Jabbari testified. Just before the lunch break, Majors took a sip from his personal cup.
Jabbari’s testimony started off by establishing a timeline of their relationship and firming up Majors’s alleged abusive patterns. Jabbari, a dancer and movement coach, said that they met in the U.K. on September 2021 on the set of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. She was helping actors move in a way that would be compatible with CGI effects. During a break one day, Majors approached Jabbari and asked about her work; she asked him where he was staying. “I said, ‘Oh, it’s a beautiful area, but you should go see the whole of London — because I love London — and he said, ‘Yeah, that would be cool, or you could show me.’” After their conversation, it dawned on Jabbari that he appeared to have asked her out. They went on a date the next day. What went from a “really nice” date turned into a whirlwind romance. “From that first date, we spent every day together, maybe minus a few within the next few months,” Jabbari said. Their romance was “amazing.” Majors told him he loved her early on, which was overwhelming but made Jabbari feel seen. “He’d write me poetry. I felt very loved and cared for and very seen. It felt like he understood me, and I understood him.”
Jabbari said that she first got a sense of Majors’s temper when she visited him in Atlanta in December 2021. “He has dogs, which I love, but I’d never met these dogs before and they are protective dogs, which is something that was important to him, to have protective dogs. I was trying to understand what that meant,” Jabbari said. Jabbari told him that she shared a dog with her ex. Hearing mention of her ex, Majors got very angry and raised his voice at her for the first time. “The mention of the ex, how dare I mention him, how dare I talk about his dog, like talking about the phys appearance of my ex, talking about how it’s embarrassing for him that I dated him … his dog is pathetic, all this kind of stuff.” Jabbari knew not to mention her ex again.
A few months later, Jabbari attended Glastonbury Festival with friends in June 2022. When messages from Majors did come through due to bad cell service, he was livid. “I shouldn’t be there and how dare I go, like this is a really important week for me and you should have turned around and left …” Jabbari said of the texts she received. “I felt guilty for being there so I left, basically.” She eventually promised she’d “never go somewhere without him and without service.”
During a July 2022 visit in Los Angeles, he “exploded” when Jabbari asked what was upsetting him. “He was full of rage and aggression — he was throwing things, shouting in my face.” Majors’s anger grew even more physical in September 2022. Jabbari and one of her closest friends went out for a drink in London and ended up back at Jabbari’s shared home with Majors. Majors appeared to be angry that Jabbari brought her girlfriend home to hang out. As a sort of peace offering, Jabbari decided to get breakfast and coffee for them the next morning. As she was walking across the park behind their house, Majors appeared and ripped the headphones out of her ears and “started stamping on them.” He warned, “You better not be in the house when I come home” and screamed in her face. She rushed back and started to pack a bag, but there wasn’t much time before Majors returned and began to throw her clothing around. Jabbari told him he could stop and that she was leaving. She went to a friend’s house and returned after Majors texted. He urged her not to tell anyone what had happened because he wanted to marry her, and this would ruin it.
“I’m a good man, a great man. I’m doing great things, not just for me…for the world.” Majors could be heard in a recording presented in court saying that Jabbari’s behavior “took away from the plan, and the plan is evident.”
Majors is on trial for four misdemeanor counts involving an alleged assault on Jabbari in New York in a hired Escalade this spring. Prosecutor Michael Perez said in his opening statement on December 4 that Majors roughed up his then-girlfriend in March “to cover up his infidelity.” Majors, Perez said, employed a “cruel and manipulative pattern of psychological and physical abuse” during their relationship of some two years, wielding “physical violence against her to manipulate her, control her, and physically hurt her.” The altercation, which lasted from late March 24 into the next morning, started after Jabbari noticed a message on Majors’s phone that appeared to be from another woman. When Jabbari grabbed the phone, “he began grabbing at Ms. Jabbari’s body. He pulled her right arm behind her back and twisted it … he struck a blow that struck across the right side of her head. Because of that strike, the defendant was able to grab his phone.” His effort to cover up cheating caused Jabbari “substantial pain” and a broken finger, Perez alleged.
Majors’s defense told jurors he was the real victim during opening statements. Chaudhry claimed Majors was “the only person who emerged from the car bloodied or hurt. The one who was slapped, clawed, and scratched by Grace Jabbari in a way that made the driver — the only witness to this event — describe Ms. Jabbari as ‘psycho girl.’”
Related