I Don’t Really Care That Jonathan Majors Is Your BFF

Whoopi Goldberg, Matthew McConaughey, and Michael B. Jordan all think Majors, who was convicted for assaulting and harassing his ex-girlfriend, should be welcomed back to Hollywood.

By Kylie Cheung  |  March 14, 2025 | 2:42pm
Photo: Getty Images CelebritiesEntertainmentLatest
I Don’t Really Care That Jonathan Majors Is Your BFF

The Hollywood Reporter is on a roll, if that roll is wildly frustrating cover stories. On Friday, the magazine launched its latest cover choice featuring Jonathan Majors, who, in December 2023, was found guilty of assaulting and harassing his ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, in an incident from March of that year. The feature, titled “Jonathan Majors’ Moment of Truth” and accompanied by a glamorous photoshoot, is rife with eyebrow-raising lines that seem meant to instill sympathy or perhaps even support for a man accused of strangling and breaking the fingers of his ex-girlfriend—and accused of varying degrees of abuse by several other exes, too. But one of the most frustrating parts of the story is its appalling quotes from A-list friends of Majors, who seemingly believe that their personal appraisals of him as a good hang mean he should be welcomed back to Hollywood.

Whoopi Goldberg, who collaborated with Majors in the 2017 show When We Rise, suggested he should be given a second chance in the industry. “You don’t get to say sorry these days,” she told the outlet. To be clear, Majors has not said he is sorry to Jabbari. In fact, his legal team spent the entirety of the trial disparaging her character and minimizing her suffering. So! Goldberg currently works with Majors’ fiancée, Meagan Good, on the Amazon Prime series Harlem. She continued, “[Majors] was arrested. He went to court. He did what he was supposed to do. I’m not sure what else there is.”

Matthew McConaughey, Majors’ co-star from the 2018 film White Boy Rick, told THR, “I’ve known and know him as someone who is continuously striving to improve as a human, a man and an actor. I believe in him.” Majors’ Creed III co-star Michael B. Jordan also previously expressed support for Majors in February, praising Majors’ resilience—aka surviving the mortifying ordeal of facing accountability for assaulting a woman—and told THR he’d “love to make Creed IV together—among other projects” with Majors.

I’ll say it: I really don’t care that Jonathan Majors is your BFF. Your individual experience with a person is not universal. Over the course of his December 2023 trial, Jabbari accused Majors of prolonged physical and emotional abuse; texts between them from September 2022 suggest that he once beat her to the extent that she wanted to go to the hospital, only for him to try to convince her not to, writing, “It could lead to an investigation even if you do lie, and they suspect something.”

Has it ever occurred to any of his celebrity pals that someone who allegedly broke his girlfriend’s fingers and tried to strangle her presents, at the very least, a workplace safety hazard? It would be fair for anyone to not want to share a cubicle with someone found guilty of domestic assault, and it’s perfectly fair for anyone to not want to share a set with such a person. 

A New York jury convicted Majors of one count of misdemeanor third-degree assault and one count of second-degree harassment but acquitted him of two other counts of assault and aggravated harassment. THR offered this frustrating appraisal of the jury’s ruling: “Essentially, [the jury] seemed to believe that Majors had, in fact, caused Jabbari’s injuries, but that he hadn’t intended to.” I would laugh if it weren’t all so bleak: Yeah, let’s all pretend Jonathan Majors just accidentally beat up a woman who says he abused her for about two years. Sure!

Within the first paragraphs of the story Majors, who at other points declares that he doesn’t pity himself, says that during his trial, “There were days when it was like, ‘Is this real?’ It’s a heartbreak like I’ve never experienced and it just compounded and compounded.” The feature places outsized focus on just how promising Majors’ career once was, pointing to the massive windfall of cash he was about to make from Marvel Studios before being fired, all because of the small inconvenience of him assaulting his girlfriend. It recounts how Majors brought a Bible to court every day of his trial, hand-in-hand with his supportive current girlfriend. The story also heaps praise on his acting abilities, as if that matters: “For the many strong opinions about Majors’ offscreen life, Hollywood does agree on one thing—the quality of his acting.” The implicit message seems to be that we should all mourn his lost potential. I, personally, would rather mourn all the opportunities Jabbari might have lost while enduring domestic abuse. 

Similar to interviews from Armie Hammer, another once well-regarded actor who was serially accused of abuse, Majors also divulges that he survived child sexual abuse, leading to depression and struggles well into adulthood. But the context in which he’s chosen to volunteer this information is incredibly telling. 

THR’s cover story comes ahead of Majors’ forthcoming film Magazine Dreams, which releases later this month. It was shelved by Searchlight Pictures shortly after Majors’ trial, then acquired by Briarcliff Entertainment in 2024. Majors’ ex-girlfriend, Maura Hooper, is the only person they interviewed whose perspective I care about: “I don’t really care that his movie is coming out,” she said. “What do you get at the end of a 52-week domestic violence course? Do the victims get a debrief? How could I know if he’s changed? I don’t see redemption happening here.”

 
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