Jonathan Majors’ ex-girlfriendtook the witness stand on Thursday for the third consecutive day, where she faced questions from the “Creed III” actor’s defense attorney about the injuries she sustained on the night in March she was allegedly assaulted.
Majors’ attorney Priya Chaudhry asked Grace Jabbari, 30, about why she had gone out to a nightclub immediately after the alleged assault, suggesting that her injuries must not have been particularly serious.
“I was feeling pain but I was choosing to ignore it. I was filled with adrenaline,” Jabbari told the Manhattan jury. “The next morning is when [the pain] sunk in. When I woke up, I felt like I had been hit by a bus.”
In her testimony, Jabbari described meeting three strangers on the street after the alleged altercation with Majors. They invited her to Loosie’s Nightclub on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She went because she “didn’t want to be alone.” At the venue, Jabbari told the jury, she danced, took “one or two” tequila shots and shared a bottle of Champagne with her new friends.
“I was upset about the cheating,” she said. “It was on my mind.”
Majors is accused of assaulting Jabbari in the backseat of a private car service they took from Brooklyn to their Chelsea apartment on March 25. Jabbari testified on Tuesday that she saw a text message on Majors’ phone from another woman that read, “Wish I was kissing you right now.” She took the phone out of his hands to see who sent the message and he forcefully retrieved it, according to Jabbari. She said this caused bruising, swelling and “excruciating” pain and resulted in a swollen finger and a cut behind her ear.
Police were not called until the next day when Majors, who spent the night at a hotel, returned to their shared apartment in Chelsea and found Jabbari asleep on the floor. Chaudhry said in her opening statement that Majors did so out of concern for Jabbari’s mental state.Jabbari said that she had taken sleeping pills because it was too painful for her to fall asleep naturally.
During the trial, Jabbari teared up multiple times watching police footage of officers searching her apartment and giving her medical attention. At one point, she had to leave the stand for a few minutes to compose herself. “I was trying to sleep. I ended up being sick. My head hurts, my ear,” she told officers in the video played in court.
As the jury was shown footage from the nightclub, Chaudhry asked if Jabbari hit her head on the DJ booth, to which Jabbari responded: “I did not.” In a video of Jabbari touching her hair as she left the club, Chaudhry questioned if Jabbari felt blood on her head. “I didn’t touch behind my ear, so I didn’t,” she said.
The jury saw video surveillance footage from various points of the night, including the street where Jabbari initially conversed with the three strangers. Chaudhry questioned Jabbari about playing with and “fluffing” her hair despite the laceration behind her right ear and pain in her finger.
When Chaudry asked if this motion hurt, Jabbari responded, “I wasn’t thinking about pain at this point. I was upset.”
During Jabbari’s cross-examination, Majors, 34, sat at the defense table as he whispered with his attorney and intently watched the video surveillance footage played for the jury. Majors’ current girlfriend, Meagan Good, has attended each day of the proceedings.
Chaudhry also pressed Jabbari about the altercation in the car, asking her whether Majors was “using a lot of force” and whether it hurt. Jabbari replied “yes” to both questions and added, “I knew not to fight back.”
Jabbari said previously during the trial that she did not want to involve the police after he allegedly assaulted her. She told jurors that Majors had previously warned her about trusting the police because of “what they would do to him as a Black man” and added, “I didn’t want to put him in that situation.”
Chaudhry has alleged it was Jabbari who assaulted Majors in the vehicle that night — not the other way around. The defense has also argued that Jabbari fabricated the allegations to get back at Majors after their breakup. They met in August 2021 on the London set of Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and dated for two years before Majors ended the relationship on the night of the alleged assault.
“This is a case about the end of a relationship, not about a crime,” Chaudhrysaid in her opening statement. “At least, not one that Mr. Majors committed.”
Majors is on trial for four misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could face up to a year in prison. The cross-examination of Jabbari is expected to finish on Friday. Her colleague and friend, Holly Blakey. will be the next witness called to the stand.
