Jonathan Majors dissuaded ex from going to doctor, unsealed texts show

MANHATTAN (CN) — “Creed III” actor Jonathan Majors urged his ex-girlfriend to not get medical treatment for injuries from an altercation between the two, according to text messages shown to jurors on Friday in his domestic violence trial.

The previously undisclosed text messages, read aloud in Manhattan criminal court, showed that Majors had warned his then-girlfriend, British dancer Grace Jabbari, against going to a hospital to report injuries from an unidentified episode in England in September 2022, separate from the March 2023 incident for which he faces misdemeanor assault charges.

While Manhattan prosecutors claim the 34-year-old breakout star of the 2019 drama “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” injured Jabbari during a domestic altercation in an Escalade taxi on the night of March 25, the unsealed text messages refer to a separate, uncharged incident six months earlier.

"Did the defendant try to dissuade you from getting medical attention?" Assistant District Attorney Kelli Galloway asked Jabbari during the prosecution’s questioning on redirect on Friday morning.

"Yes," Jabbari testified.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Gaffey blocked prosecutors from showing jurors the text messages earlier in the trial, but after cross-examination by Majors’ defense attorneys this week, he found Jabbari’s “credibility has been impugned,” and allowed on redirect a tailored version of the text exchange, with parts redacted, to be entered into evidence.

In the texts from the morning of September 22, 2022, Jabbari tells the Marvel star her head hurt and that she was only trying to go to a doctor to get “stronger painkillers” for the injury.

“I will tell the doctor I bumped my head if I go,” she wrote.

Majors, who is Black, pleaded with his then-girlfriend, a white woman from England, to not invite scrutiny of their relationship by going to a doctor.

“It’s just fake,” Majors had sent to Jabbari in the redacted text message exchange read aloud by Jabbari and Galloway. “And I fear you have no perspective what could happen if you go the hospital, they will ask you questions, and as I don’t think you actually protect us, it will lead to an investigation even if you do lie and they suspect something.”

"Why would I tell them what really happened if I feel like I want to be with you," she wrote to Majors.

Later in the text exchange, Majors’ messages illustrated feelings of self-hatred and suicidal ideation, which Jabbari recounted earlier in her direct testimony.

“Last night I considered killing myself versus coming home,” Majors wrote to Jabbari. “Last night you said you needed love and I tried to put my feelings aside. But I need love too. Or maybe I’m such a monster and I should just kill myself."

"This way of existence is miserable. I want to die," he wrote.

Majors, a devout Christian who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, slumped in his chair and hung his head forward as the texts were read out loud on Friday.

While Judge Gaffey strictly prohibited Jabbari from testifying to any details of the underlying incident that immediately precipitated the March 2022 text messages, Jabbari previously testified that earlier that week, Majors had fumed at her, disappointed with her drinking and angrily mandating that she act like the Michelle Obama to his Barrack.

“The woman that supports me, that I support… needs to be a great woman,” he said in a recording surreptitiously captured by Jabbari, which was entered into evidence.

Jabbari dated Majors from August 2021 until March 2023. They broke up in the immediate aftermath of the turbulent fight in a taxi returning to Lower Manhattan from a dinner in Brooklyn.

He has been supported in court by his current girlfriend, “Stomp The Yard” actress Meagan Good, each day of the trial so far.

The trial, on its fifth day Friday, is expected to last a total of two weeks.

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