Jonathan Majors leaves a courtroom in New York. A Manhattan jury convicted the Marvel star Monday of one misdemeanor assault charge and one harassment violation.
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A Manhattan jury found Jonathan Majors guilty of recklessly assaulting and injuring his ex.The Monday verdict will have repercussions on the actor’s career for years to come, crisis PR experts said.If he takes careful steps forward, there may be a path to reviving his career in the future.
A jury found Jonathan Majors guilty of two misdemeanor charges related to domestic abuse.
The criminal conviction halted the Marvel star’s career, which has been in free fall since abuse allegations against him first surfaced in March 2023.
Less than two hours after the verdict, a Marvel spokesperson told Business Insider that Majors would be out as Kang, the character who had been slated as the main villain in the superhero franchise.
Crisis PR experts say there’s still a chance Majors could stay in the business. But the road will be long and difficult given conviction, said Kathryn Arnold, a producer and entertainment consultant.
“With the Me Too movement, and general sensitivity around physical and sexual abuse, it is highly unlikely that a studio or network would want to cast him, out of respect for women in general, women in the industry, and fear of viewer backlash,” Arnold said.
Jurors found Majors guilty of recklessly assaulting and injuring his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, but acquitted him of assault with intent to cause injury. They also found that Majors harassed Jabbari.
Majors’ sentencing is scheduled for February 2024. He faces as much as a one-year jail sentence on the misdemeanor assault and harassment charges.
Majors rose to prominence in the independent film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” in 2019 before becoming a franchise star in 2023 with “Creed III” and playing Kang the Conqueror in “Loki” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” He had been set to play Kang in numerous Marvel projects that would have culminated with “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty,” a villainous role that likely would have cemented his place in Hollywood — and secured his paycheck for decades to come.
Around the time of his arrest, in March, Majors found himself abandoned by Hollywood’s usual reputation-protecting structures. His talent agency, Entertainment 360, and public relations firm, Lede Company, both dropped him that month, according to Deadline.
Instead, he relied on his criminal defense attorney, Priya Chaudhry, to put out statements on his behalf. Chaudhry accused Jabbari of assaulting Majors herself and overstating her injuries, and claimed New York City police harbored a bias against him because of “racism.”
Nevertheless, in the five years since the Me Too movement, actors before Majors have managed to return to Hollywood despite disturbing revelations that became public in court. Johnny Depp, who was found liable along with his ex Amber Heard of defamation last year, was greeted with a seven-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in the film “Jeanne du Barry.”
“It’s all about Hollywood justifying,” said attorney Tre Lovell, owner of The Lovell Firm. “They all want to make money off him and the second that they think they can, they will. So it’s about giving them the cover, giving Hollywood the cover, to cast him again.”
PR experts explain the strategy pitfalls Majors made leading up to the verdict — and any possibilities for a career revamp.
Majors took a gamble by going to trial
Ahead of the trial — where Jabbari ultimately testified under oath and Majors did not — Majors rejected the idea of hiring a professional public relations team, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Majors believed the trial would prove his innocence and that he felt “he’s got this on his own,” the source said.
“He didn’t want to spend the money,” the source told Business Insider. “He felt that this was all nonsense, and it was a benign, stupid accusation, and it’ll easily be squashed.”
It was surprising that Majors even allowed the case to go to trial, to begin with, as opposed to settling, said Evan Nierman, the founder and CEO of Global Crisis PR Firm Red Banyan.
“It seems to signal that there was a big gap in how he and his former girlfriend recounted and characterized the fateful encounter that night,” Nierman told Business Insider.
However, by the time the allegations had surfaced, much of the damage had been done, Lovell said.
“He needed to go to trial,” Lovell said. “Much like Jonny Depp, he was being cut from projects just on the allegations alone.”
The chance at exoneration would have rescued his reputation but — as turned out to be the case — “the guilty verdict could prompt some studios to steer clear for fear of prompting negative blowback from the public,” Nierman said.
Majors should have taken the accusations head-on
Majors also made a mistake by declining to testify in his trial, according to Juda Engelmeyer, the founder of HeraldPR and an expert in crisis public relations.
By remaining at the defense table, he allowed testimony from Jabbari — who said at the trial that Majors struck her in a fit of rage after Jabbari read a text on his phone — to stick in the minds of jurors without any meaningful counterbalance, Engelmayer said.
Attorneys often advise against testifying in one’s own defense at criminal trials, where the burden of proof is on prosecutors. But if Majors believed he did nothing wrong, he could have shown the jury — and the rest of the world — that he truly believed that by taking the stand, according to Engelmayer, who has represented Russian oligarchs, Harvey Weinstein, Paula Deen, and “fake heiress” Anna Sorokin as clients.
“If he believed he did nothing wrong, he had nothing to lose by testifying,” Engelmeyer said. “Even if his words got misconstrued, he could defend it because he knew what went on so securely.”
By not testifying, Engelmeyer said, Majors sent a signal that he wasn’t secure enough about his version of events to testify under oath, or his lawyers didn’t have faith that he could stand up to cross-examination from prosecutors.
Engelmeyer drew a comparison to Kevin Spacey, who — even as he is far from career rehabilitation, with more than a dozen sexual misconduct accusers — took the witness stand in two different sexual assault trials, telling the courtrooms his version of events, and was cleared in both cases.
“If what Johnathan Majors believes is right and his narrative events are true, he should have stood by it forwardly publicly and pushed it and promoted it proudly by saying, ‘I’m not afraid of this. I know this is a bad time in the world, and I know that people get in trouble. I might get canceled, but I am so sure I didn’t do this. This is what happened,'” Engelmeyer said.
Majors needs to show genuine remorse
Though the sentence has yet to determine whether and how long Majors will spend behind bars instead of appearing in more blockbuster movies, the verdict itself is a stain on his career, Nierman said.
“The guilty verdict could prompt some studios to steer clear for fear of prompting negative blowback from the public,” Nierman said.
What comes next for Majors will depend on how he can portray himself in the public eye, Nierman said.
“It will be in his best interest to provide his perspective and framing of what took place, and not to allow the image of him as an abuser to become cemented in people’s minds,” Nierman said. Majors “needs to get it right and strike the right tone between being apologetic and remorseful while at the same time downplaying his actions toward his former girlfriend.”
Majors should rush to apologize now, demonstrate that he’s learning from his mistakes, and seek to become a role model, Engelmayer said. He suggested Majors could attend a rehabilitation therapy program for domestic abuse and share his journey with his followers.
“People will say he is only doing it because he wants his career back,” Engelmeyer said. “Of course, he wants his career back, but he is putting all this effort into it because it’s real to him also.”
A path back to Hollywood will likely take a long time but Majors should look to independent films to cast him, Lovell said.
“From a reputation standpoint, the sooner he works again, the better,” Nierman.