Mr. Majors spoke on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” his first interview since being convicted of misdemeanor assault and harassment for attacking his girlfriend in a car.
Jonathan Majors, an ascending Hollywood star whose career was upended when he was found guilty last month of assault and harassment for attacking his girlfriend, said in an interview broadcast on Monday that he was “absolutely shocked” by the verdict.
In the interview, portions of which were shown on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mr. Majors, 34, said that the episode had been “very hard” and “confusing in many ways.”
“I’m standing there and the verdict comes down. I say, ‘How is that possible based off the evidence, based off the prosecution’s evidence, let alone our evidence? How is that possible?’” he told Linsey Davis of ABC News.
A six-person jury in Manhattan convicted Mr. Majors last month on misdemeanor assault and harassment charges for an altercation with Grace Jabbari, who was then his girlfriend, as they rode in a hired S.U.V. in March.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, Marvel Studios parted ways with the actor, clouding the prospects of his once promising acting career. Marvel Studios had previously intended to build several films around the character Mr. Majors played in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” (Both Marvel and ABC, which ran the interview, are owned by Disney.)
Mr. Majors’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 6.
During a whirlwind two-week trial, the courtroom heard Ms. Jabbari describe the altercation that left her ear bloody and finger fractured. She said that Mr. Majors had received a flirty text from another woman, and that she had grabbed his phone out of his hand. First, she said, he tried to pry her fingers away; then he twisted her hand and her arm.
“Next,” she said, “I felt like a really hard blow across my head.”
Eventually, she said, Mr. Majors asked the driver to stop the vehicle. Video that jurors watched showed Mr. Majors jumping out, followed by Ms. Jabbari. He turned around, picked her up and placed her back in the car, appearing to push her back in when she tried to get out.
Mr. Majors did not testify during the trial. But in the interview broadcast on Monday, he continued to dispute Ms. Jabbari’s account of the altercation and said that he did not know how she suffered the cut behind her ear and fractured finger.
“I wish to God I knew,” he said.
In a statement, Brittany Henderson, a lawyer for Ms. Jabbari, said that Mr. Majors “continues to take no accountability for his actions.”
“His denigration of our jury system is not dissimilar from the above-the-law attitude that he has maintained throughout this legal process,” Ms. Henderson said in the statement. “The timing of these new statements demonstrates a clear lack of remorse for the actions for which he was found guilty and should make the sentencing decisions fairly easy for the Court.”
Mr. Majors first gained attention in 2019 with the independent film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and quickly expanded into blockbuster movies, delivering acclaimed performances in “Creed III” and “Quantumania.” He also starred in “Magazine Dreams,” about a troubled aspiring bodybuilder — a film acquired by Searchlight Pictures, a Disney subsidiary. But the movie, originally scheduled to be released this fall, was removed from the studio’s calendar last year amid the actor’s legal troubles.
Asked if he thinks he will work again in Hollywood, Mr. Majors said, “Heck yeah, I do. I pray I do,” in the interview. “But it’s God’s plan and God’s timing.”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
