Jonathan Majors Had History of Abuse in Relationships, Women Say

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By Melena Ryzik

Melena Ryzik spent more than four months interviewing people across the country who knew or worked with Jonathan Majors.

Published Feb. 8, 2024Updated Feb. 9, 2024, 3:53 p.m. ET

Since the actor Jonathan Majors was found guilty in December of assaulting and harassing a girlfriend, he has maintained his innocence and his hope of reviving a once-skyrocketing career that disintegrated in the wake of his conviction. In a televised interview last month, he said that he had “never struck a woman.”

But in pretrial statements to the prosecution in that assault case and, separately, in interviews with The New York Times, another former girlfriend, Emma Duncan, accused him of emotionally and physically abusing her — choking her, throwing her around and bruising her. A third, Maura Hooper, also said that he had emotionally abused her.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Ms. Duncan and Ms. Hooper, actresses who dated Mr. Majors before he shot to fame as the supervillain Kang in Marvel projects, described him as a controlling, threatening figure who isolated them from friends and career pursuits. “You lose your sense of worth,” Ms. Duncan said.

And in interviews with former colleagues, The Times found that Mr. Majors had a history of volatility on the set of the HBO series “Lovecraft Country” that included confrontations with female co-workers that led them to complain to the network.

On Thursday afternoon, a lawyer for Mr. Majors, Priya Chaudhry, said that Mr. Majors had not physically abused Ms. Duncan. She described the relationships with both women as “toxic” and said that Mr. Majors was taking responsibility for his role in them. She added that “countless” women in the entertainment industry “can attest to his professionalism.”

This article is based on interviews with 20 people, including some who requested anonymity for fear of career repercussions, and on statements submitted to the prosecution in the December case, in which Mr. Majors was found guilty of harassment and misdemeanor assault of Grace Jabbari, a former girlfriend. He is scheduled to be sentenced in April, though his lawyers asked on Tuesday that the judge throw out the jury’s guilty verdict.

EMMA DUNCAN GOT TO KNOW Mr. Majors, now 34, at a summer stock program in Chautauqua, N.Y., and was engaged to him from 2015 to 2019, she said. Maura Hooper, a fellow student when Mr. Majors attended the prestigious Yale School of Drama, dated him from 2013 to 2015. Both said they experienced his hot and cold tendencies.

In the beginning of their relationships, he showered each with attention and seemingly romantic gestures, including quickly calling them “Mrs. Majors” — manipulative behavior they have come to understand as love bombing. “At first you feel, ‘Oh, I’m being loved,’” Ms. Duncan said. “And then you feel, ‘I’m being erased.’”

Ms. Chaudhry, his lawyer, said: “These relationships were between young drama students and all began with mutual intensity.”

In interviews and pretrial statements to prosecutors in the case in which Mr. Majors was convicted, the women detailed multiple episodes in which he was a domineering or violent partner.

Ahead of the trial, the statements were submitted under the Molineux rule, which lets a court decide whether the prosecution can introduce evidence to show a pattern of behavior. Without commenting publicly on their merit, the judge in Mr. Majors’s case did not allow these statements into evidence; there is a high bar for allowing testimony about past behavior.

The Times obtained the statements before the trial. The interactions they describe were subsequently confirmed to The Times by multiple friends of the women, in whom they confided, as well as by contemporaneous journal entries, text messages, photos and, in Ms. Hooper’s case, medical records.

In July 2016, Ms. Duncan and Mr. Majors were driving in Chautauqua when they began arguing, and Mr. Majors “threatened to strangle and kill her,” the statement says — one of several instances when violence loomed early in their relationship.

Ms. Chaudhry confirmed that there was an argument in the car but said that Mr. Majors did not threaten to strangle or kill Ms. Duncan.

Later that same month, Ms. Duncan visited Mr. Majors in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was filming “Hostiles” opposite Christian Bale. During the trip, she discovered messages between Mr. Majors and another woman on his Apple Watch. When Ms. Duncan confronted him, Mr. Majors threw the watch out a taxi window, she said, an incident that Ms. Chaudhry confirmed.

Back in the hotel, Ms. Duncan started packing her things. Mr. Majors, the statement says, “pushed Ms. Duncan into the couch and began to choke her.” He also stated, “‘I’m going to kill you.’” He then “threw her body across the room” and said, “‘I’m going to make sure you can’t have children.’” When she made moves to leave, he apologized.

Ms. Chaudhry denied this account. “This did not happen,” she said, though she acknowledged that they “had many serious arguments.” She said that he is now “choosing to take responsibility for his own part in that toxic relationship, focusing on himself, and addressing his lifelong depression.”

In an incident at their Harlem apartment in October 2016, according to the statement, Mr. Majors picked up Ms. Duncan after an argument “and slammed her body into their mailbox.” She had bruising on her back and arms and pain afterward, the statement says. Mr. Majors also threatened to kill himself, a threat he repeated in later altercations.

Mr. Majors’s lawyer confirmed an incident but said: “Ms. Duncan was physically trying to stop him from harming himself and during this, they both fell into a mailbox.”

Nearly a year later, according to Ms. Duncan’s statement, he threw her to the ground and bruised her forehead with his; Ms. Chaudhry denied this. In April 2018, after Ms. Duncan was unavailable by phone for about 40 minutes while at a friend’s birthday party, Mr. Majors told her she should kill herself, she recalled.

Ms. Chaudhry said that Mr. Majors denied saying those words but “did say hurtful things,” which he regrets.

In February 2019, the statement says, he flipped a table and broke chairs in their apartment, and destroyed Ms. Duncan’s belongings and family heirlooms, during one of her many attempts to end things. Later that year, when she realized that Mr. Majors was continuing an affair, he “made a fist and stated, ‘Don’t make me punch you,’” the statement says. She left the relationship not long after.

His lawyer, Ms. Chaudhry, said that Mr. Majors denied making a fist or saying anything about punching or harming Ms. Duncan, and that he had “flipped his own flimsy fold-up table” during an incident. Ms. Chaudhry accused Ms. Duncan of slapping or hitting Mr. Majors across the face and head several times. She did not immediately provide details.

Ms. Duncan said her own account was “well documented.”

“I stand by the events described,” she said.

MR. MAJORS HAD BEGUN DRAWING ATTENTION for his acting while he was still a student at Yale. After graduation, his ascent was quick, and directors praised his standout charisma, versatility and ability to reflect nuance.

In 2019, Mr. Majors began principal filming on “Lovecraft Country,” his first project as a lead actor. Though he earned an Emmy nomination, it was a difficult shoot, according to nine people associated with the production; the subject matter, which dealt with race in midcentury America, was heavy, and the episodes, with sci-fi and horror elements, were complicated, with grindingly long days.

In interviews with cast and crew members, they described Mr. Majors’s demeanor changing depending on whom he was surrounded by. He was often a buddy to male technicians and craftspeople, but to women he could be testy and prone to argument; women on set warned one another to tread carefully around him, multiple people said.

Jessica Pollini, a veteran with more than a decade in the TV industry (“Boardwalk Empire,” “Yellowstone”), came in for Episode 9 of “Lovecraft Country” as a first assistant director — a crucial managerial role that requires overseeing shots and staff for months.

She and Mr. Majors had only glancing interactions at first, she said. But as they were wrapping production after a long day, Mr. Majors approached her, saying, to her surprise, that they needed to talk. As other cast and crew left, he indicated they should go to the set’s cramped, faux bathroom, where he stood in front of her.

“I just remember him sizing me up and down,” Ms. Pollini said in an interview. “He’s a big guy, and I’m 5-3.” He told her sternly that things weren’t working. “He says, ‘You’re not welcome here,’” Ms. Pollini said, crying as she recalled the intensity of his dressing-down. She was unsure what she had done wrong and felt trapped. “I’m thinking, how am I going to get out of this situation?” she said. “I kind of cowered. I was scared.”

Eventually, she said, she placated Mr. Majors, saying she would try to do better, and he left. Ms. Pollini immediately told two colleagues what had happened. In an interview with The Times, one of them said that in all their years in the industry, he had never seen her shaken up like that.

They encouraged her to report the encounter to a producer, but she resisted, until she learned of other women who also had disturbing experiences.

Lisa Zugschwerdt, a veteran assistant director who was on “Lovecraft” from the start, said she had a negative experience with Mr. Majors early on, when he got angry over a schedule change that she was relaying. She tried to avoid him after that.

But before a sexual harassment training on set, Mr. Majors approached her while she was standing with another female crew member and “got really up in my face,” Ms. Zugschwerdt recalled. He made a derogatory racial remark about her looks, said Ms. Zugschwerdt, a woman of color.

Ms. Zugschwerdt was shocked — less by the disparagement than by the way he crossed physical and professional boundaries, she said, especially as she listened to the harassment seminar. “They talked about hostile work environment,” she said. In the days that followed, she worried about what else Mr. Majors might do. She left the show after a few episodes.

Ms. Chaudhry said Mr. Majors had not made a derogatory racial comment about anyone.

Multiple female crew members said that these sorts of incidents made it difficult for them to do their jobs.

Ms. Pollini and Ms. Zugschwerdt, along with a third female crew member, a production assistant, eventually complained about Mr. Majors to HBO, and the network advised him to apologize. He did so gruffly, Ms. Pollini said, saying it was “a misunderstanding.” But things did not improve afterward, she said. (A spokeswoman for HBO declined to comment.)

Ms. Chaudhry said that Mr. Majors had “never been told that anyone objected to his behavior.”

MS. DUNCAN AND MS. HOOPER’S RELATIONSHIPS with Mr. Majors briefly overlapped, though neither initially realized it.

When Ms. Hooper and Mr. Majors began dating, she said that he quickly expressed deep love for her but also became controlling, dictating where she could go, who she could socialize with and how she could behave. She was “not allowed to speak to anyone about their relationship, isolating her from a support system,” according to the pretrial statement. She became a shadow of herself, a Yale classmate said.

Ms. Chaudhry described Mr. Majors as “young and insecure” at the time of his relationship with Ms. Hooper. “Looking back, he is embarrassed by some of his jealous behavior,” she said.

Ms. Hooper got pregnant a few months into the relationship. When she told Mr. Majors that she had scheduled an abortion in two weeks, he insisted that she do it sooner, she said in the statement. Mr. Majors dropped her off at the clinic, where he was advised that Ms. Hooper would need an escort home, she said. But when she called him afterward to pick her up, he said he was heading to a rehearsal. Because she believed that Mr. Majors wouldn’t tolerate her discussing the situation with anyone, the statement says, she couldn’t call a friend; she feigned an escort and walked herself home. “I felt trapped and alone,” she said later in an interview with The Times.

Ms. Chaudhry said that because both Mr. Majors and Ms. Hooper were in the same show, they agreed they could not both miss the rehearsal, and that she would find her way home after the procedure. Ms. Hooper said they were not in the same show at the time. (Through his attorneys, he denied he asked her to move up the abortion.)

“That deeply sad event is still a painful memory for Mr. Majors,” Ms. Chaudhry said.

In 2015, when Ms. Hooper confronted Mr. Majors with evidence that he was having an affair, he threatened to kill himself, her statement says. A year later, after they had split up and Mr. Majors learned that Ms. Hooper had a brief relationship with someone he knew, he phoned and berated her, her statement says, calling her a “whore” and saying, “I hope you die; kill yourself” and “I’m going to rip you out of my heart the way they ripped our baby out of you.”

Ms. Chaudhry described it as “a mutually intense conversation.” Mr. Majors “regrets saying hurtful things in that moment but does not recall the specific things he said,” she said.

Ms. Hooper wrote about the incident in her journal, which was reviewed by The Times. The lengthy phone call caused “residual trauma and suicidal ideation,” she said in the statement to prosecutors.

A Molineux submission like the statements by Ms. Hooper and Ms. Duncan is a contentious legal tool. Prosecutors successfully used such testimony in the convictions of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, but it can help open the door to an appeal of a guilty verdict. At a pretrial hearing, Mr. Majors’s defense argued that the submission would be prejudicial to their client, and the judge agreed. The actor’s lawyers are seeking to keep the filing with the women’s statements sealed permanently.

To Ms. Duncan, secrecy is tantamount to shame. Coming forward, she said, allowed her and others in the same situation to find support and recovery. “I believe in redemption,” she said. “But not without accountability.”

Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.

Melena Ryzik is a roving culture reporter and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment. She covered Oscar season for five years, and has also been a national correspondent in San Francisco and the mid-Atlantic states. More about Melena Ryzik

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