Jonathan Majors is on a redemption tour. For what, he won’t say

NEW YORK (news agencies) — Throughout the implosion of his once-skyrocketing Hollywood career, from his arrest almost exactly two years ago to his harassment and assault conviction, Jonathan Majors has maintained that he has never struck a woman.

But on Monday, as Majors was in the midst of a comeback attempt and a PR push that returned him to magazine covers, Rolling Stone published an audio recording of a conversation between Majors and Grace Jabbari. Majors was found guilty of one misdemeanor assault charge and one harassment violation for striking Jabbari in the head with an open hand and breaking her middle finger by squeezing it.

“I aggressed you,” Majors acknowledges in the recording, confirming her description of him strangling her and pushing her against a car. The recording appeared to contradict Majors’ previous claims and upend his redemption tour just as his film “Magazine Dreams” opens in theaters Friday.

In an interview with media on Wednesday, Majors declined to address the recording, and whether he has assaulted women.

“I can’t answer that,” Majors responded. “I can’t speak to that.”

Majors, who was sentenced to probation and settled a lawsuit with Jabbari in November, is striving for an unusually swift rebound following a precipitous downfall. Before his March 2023 arrest, Majors was steering toward years of Marvel stardom and a possible Oscar nomination for Elijah Bynum’s “Magazine Dreams,” in which he plays a disturbed aspiring bodybuilder prone to violent outbursts.

Two years later, Majors returns to the public eye with a pledge that he’s changed just months after completing a year of court-ordered domestic violence counseling. At the same time, he’s not directly addressing any of the allegations against him — including those from two previous partners, Emma Duncan and Maura Hooper, who in statements submitted pretrial, detailed physically violent and emotionally abusive incidents that bear some similarities to the Jabbari case.

“It’s not something I can talk about legally,” Majors says. “I said to my wife the other day, I’ve changed. I don’t recognize myself. I don’t recognize that guy. I’m in a completely different place. There’s no doubt that I was in turmoil. That guy then didn’t have any tools to deal with things. I don’t know if I liked the guy then. He was accomplished, he was doing great things in certain ways. But I don’t know if I would have hung out with him.”

Majors, who sat for an interview at a Manhattan hotel without a publicist present, spoke reflectively about his experience of the past two years — with the exception of anything specifically related to the conviction, the additional abuse allegations or the women who say he harmed them. Despite never naming a misdeed, Majors says he is reformed.

“I’d say to anyone who cares to listen: I’ve had two years of deep thought and mediation and rumination on myself and my actions, my community, my industry,” he said. “I’m stronger now. I’m wiser now. I’m better now.”

Not everyone is convinced. Hooper, who met Majors at Yale Drama School and dated him from 2013 to 2015, described a traumatizing and controlling relationship. A year after their relationship ended, Majors learned of her having a relationship with someone he knew, she said. According to Hooper’s statement, Majors called her and shamed her for having an abortion, which he had encouraged, and told her to kill herself.

“The level of anger that I experienced from this man, I don’t know you exorcise that from your life or your behavior in only 52 weeks,” Hooper told the news agencies. “People go to therapy for years. I went to therapy for years after Jonathan Majors just to get my mind back.”

Hooper and Duncan’s statements were ultimately not allowed as evidence during the trial, but they remain public record. Attorneys for Majors have denied some of their claims, describing both relationships as “toxic.”

Duncan, who dated and was engaged to Majors from 2015 to 2019, described at least eight physical or threatening encounters in her statement. During an argument in 2016 while driving in Chautauqua, New York, he threatened to strangle and kill her, she said. At a spa in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she discovered text messages between Majors and another woman and began packing to leave. He pushed her into couch and began choking her while saying he was going to kill her, Duncan said. (She didn’t respond to an email from the news agencies seeking comment. Attorneys for Jabbari also didn’t respond to emails.)

“There is a documented history of 10 years of abuse of women where he calls women ‘sluts,’ he calls us ‘fat whores,’ he tells us to kill ourselves,” Hooper says. “When I hear people say, ‘Come on, how come he can’t come back into the fold?’ I don’t know that those people have read this or understand that we’re talking about a pattern.”

A changed political climate and several recent cases, including the overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s New York sexual assault conviction, have suggested Hollywood has entered a new chapter in the #MeToo movement. Majors’ attempted comeback is one of the most conspicuous tests to the fraying curbs of cancellation and #MeToo vindication.

“We’re suffering a period of tremendous political retrenchment and backlash in this movement,” says Debra Katz, the civil rights attorney who represented Christine Blasey Ford, accuser of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, along with Weinstein accusers. “Much of what we’ve fought for seems to be on the line.”

But women are still coming forward, and Katz believes companies and industries will hold the accused accountable. For his part, Majors, who was dropped from all projects following his conviction, has no new films announced. “Magazine Dreams,” which debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival before his arrest and was subsequently dropped by Searchlight Pictures, is being released by Briarcliff Entertainment, the indie distributor of “The Apprentice.”

“Jonathan made a mistake. There was due process. Justice was served. And then we move on, which I think is generally how we like to think this country operates,” Tom Ortenberg, chief executive of Briarcliff, said Thursday. “We’re faced with two choices: Should ‘Magazine Dreams’ be allowed to be seen? Or should we burn the negative?”

Numerous A-listers, including Michael B. Jordan and Matthew McConaughey, have advocated for Majors’ return to Hollywood. Still, Katz believes Majors’ comeback will ultimately sputter because it hasn’t gone beyond the strategy of what she describes as “get a good PR firm and show my soft side.”