Jonathan Majors, Film Career in the Balance, Faces Trial in Assault Case

An actor who was on the precipice of superstardom when Manhattan prosecutors accused him of assaulting his then-girlfriend is set to go on trial Wednesday, seeking to keep his career alive in an unusual proceeding that is expected to attract national attention.

The actor, Jonathan Majors, was charged in March with misdemeanor assault and harassment. Prosecutors say he attacked the woman, Grace Jabbari, during a car ride to his home, slapping her face, grabbing her hand violently and, after she got out of the vehicle, throwing her back into it.

The arrest froze Mr. Majors’s rapid ascent in the film industry, where he was poised to anchor several Marvel movies and awaiting the wide release of a star vehicle, “Magazine Dreams,” which is now in limbo. While it is unusual for a misdemeanor assault charge to go to trial — the vast majority of defendants plead guilty to avoid risking a harsher sentence — Mr. Majors is fighting to prove his innocence and to salvage his reputation in Hollywood.

His lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, has been aggressive in defending him, calling Ms. Jabbari a liar who attacked Mr. Majors.

After Mr. Majors filed a complaint against Ms. Jabbari, the Police Department arrested her last month, charging her with misdemeanor assault and criminal mischief. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to pursue the case, saying in a statement that it lacked “prosecutorial merit.”

Jury selection is scheduled to start on Wednesday after the trial date was delayed several times. It is unclear how long the trial will last; such proceedings can range from a couple of weeks to more than a month.

Prosecutors are expected to call several of Mr. Majors’s former girlfriends as witnesses to testify about their experiences with him, according to people with knowledge of the matter as well as court documents filed by the district attorney’s office. The identity of those witnesses has not been made public, and the judge will evaluate whether their testimony will be allowed.

In their filings, prosecutors detail their accusations against Mr. Majors, saying the altercation with Ms. Jabbari began shortly after midnight on March 25, when she saw a message on his mobile phone that said, “Wish I was kissing you right now.”

When Ms. Jabbari grabbed for the phone, prosecutors say, Mr. Majors assaulted her, prying her finger off the phone, twisting her forearm and striking her right ear.

Mr. Majors’s version of the altercation begins the same way — with a text message from another person — but blames Ms. Jabbari for what happened next. In a court filing, Ms. Chaudhry described Ms. Jabbari as having flown into a “savage rage,” clawing and slapping Mr. Majors’s face and scratching his arm.

The filing does not mention any physical retaliation by Mr. Majors and says that after the confrontation, Ms. Jabbari went out clubbing while he planned to stay at a hotel. She returned to Mr. Majors’s home later and called him from there numerous times, threatening to harm herself, Ms. Chaudhry says in the filing. When Mr. Majors returned home, the filing says, he found Ms. Jabbari lying on the floor of his walk-in closet and noticed that her ear was cut and that her finger was bruised.

In a preview of her defense, Ms. Chaudhry has released photographs and evidence related to Ms. Jabbari’s activities after the altercation, and has said that the driver of the car where the fight started would testify that he never saw Mr. Majors strike Ms. Jabbari.

The district attorney’s office, in its own filing, said Ms. Chaudhry had provided prosecutors with a statement that was purportedly from the driver and supported Mr. Majors’s version of events. But prosecutors said the driver denied any knowledge of that statement to them.

Jurors will have to evaluate the truth of each story. Ms. Jabbari is expected to testify, and while it is not clear whether Mr. Majors will also, his doing so would create a scene of unusual interest: a skilled actor working to persuade a jury of his credibility and innocence.

Hollywood has struggled to create a new generation of leading men to succeed aging stalwarts like Harrison Ford and Denzel Washington, and Mr. Majors had been seen by studio executives as one solution to the problem.

Starting in 2019 with the independent film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” his rise was swift. He starred in the HBO series “Lovecraft Country” in 2020 and quickly expanded into blockbuster movies, delivering critically acclaimed performances in “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

“Magazine Dreams,” about a troubled aspiring bodybuilder, was acquired by Searchlight Pictures, a Disney subsidiary, at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It was originally scheduled to be released this fall and widely considered a potential Oscar contender.

But Mr. Majors’s legal troubles have dimmed executives’ hopes for him. Searchlight pulled “Magazine Dreams” from its release schedule. Marvel Studios, which planned to build multiple films around the villainous character he played in “Quantumania,” has been waiting for the outcome of the criminal case before deciding whether to continue.

The case is also an unexpected test for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who has not publicly commented on the charges against Mr. Majors. His office recently lost another high-profile trial in which the defendant was represented by Ms. Chaudhry. The defendant, Adam Foss, a Black man, had been charged with rape and sexual abuse. A jury acquitted him this month after Ms. Chaudhry sought to undermine his accuser as not credible.

Afterward, Ms. Chaudhry attacked Mr. Bragg, who is Black, directly, linking Mr. Foss’s case to that of Mr. Majors.

“There is a concerning trend within the Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s office to weaponize accusations where a Black man is accused by a white woman,” she said in a statement, accusing the office of drifting toward a path of “character assassination and publicity-driven prosecution.”

Brooks Barnes contributed reporting.