Jonathan Majors, who grew up in the Dallas area, has been cast to star in Martin Villeneuve’s supernatural revenge thriller Merciless, Deadline reported.
This will be Majors’ first project since a jury found him guilty in December of harassing and assaulting ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, tracing back to an altercation months before. Majors has denied assaulting Jabbari, saying in a January interview with Good Morning America he was “reckless with her heart, not with her body.”
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Jonathan Majors, who grew up in the Dallas area, has been cast to star in Martin Villeneuve’s supernatural revenge thriller Merciless, Deadline reported.
This will be Majors’ first project since a jury found him guilty in December of harassing and assaulting ex-girlfriend Grace Jabbari, tracing back to an altercation months before. Majors has denied assaulting Jabbari, saying in a January interview with Good Morning America he was “reckless with her heart, not with her body.”
Majors was sentenced in April to a year of domestic violence counseling and probation. Jabbari has also filed a lawsuit against him accusing him of defamation and assault.
With Majors set to return to movies, Christopher Tuffin, a producer for Merciless, defended the casting of the embattled actor.
“We live in a culture that treats people as disposable, on both sides,” Tuffin told The New York Times this week. “I believe that this matter has been adjudicated in the courts and he has a right to go back to his career.”
A spokesperson for Majors did not respond to several requests for comment by phone and email.
After Majors’ 2019 breakout role in the critically acclaimed indie The Last Black Man in San Francisco, he quickly rose to stardom, nabbing leading parts in HBO’s Lovecraft Country, Creed III and the Marvel universe. A 2022 profile of Majors in The New York Times Magazine said his Marvel performances were “likely to make him set for life.”
In the wake of the guilty verdict, Marvel Studios cut ties with Majors, and Searchlight Pictures dropped Magazine Dreams, a bodybuilding drama he starred in. He was also dropped from starring as Dennis Rodman in a biopic about the basketball star.
Majors has kept a relatively low profile since his conviction, but he did appear last week at an awards ceremony hosted by celebrity blog Hollywood Unlocked, which honored him with a Perseverance Award. “I’m imperfect. I have shortcomings. I acknowledge them,” Majors said in a tearful acceptance speech.
“There will be moments in your life where things get dark,” he continued. “I’ve sat in that pitch black and what I’ve learned is that when you catch a glimpse of light, you run as hard and as fast as you can towards it. And I will never take that light for granted again.”