The Jonathan Major case begins with a debate: was he an abuser or a victim?

Jonathan Majors, an actor who Marvel expected to anchor its tent-pole superhero franchise, manipulated, threatened and ultimately assaulted his ex-girlfriend in a rental car in Manhattan, prosecutors said Monday.

Mr Majors’ lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, argued that it was her client who was attacked during the March incident and that it was he who emerged from the car bloodied and injured. She said Mr Majors’ ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, accused him as revenge for ending their relationship.

The dueling accounts were presented to six jurors during opening arguments in an unusual trial in Manhattan, where the district attorney’s office charged Mr. Majors with assault.

Felony trials are rare because a large majority of defendants plead guilty to avoid facing harsher sentences. But the charges have halted Majors’ meteoric rise in the film industry, leaving him struggling to salvage his career and reputation.

A prosecutor, Michael Perez, said in his opening statement that Mr Majors attacked Ms Jabbari during a drive home in the early hours of March 25 after she saw a text from another woman on his phone. He punched her in the face and grabbed her hand violently, Mr. Perez said, adding that the driver would testify that after she got out of the car, Mr. Majors threw her back inside “like a football.”

Throughout their relationship, Mr. Majors had demonstrated a need to maintain control, Mr. Perez told jurors, and in March he had shown “without hesitation” in using physical force against Ms. Jabbari. The altercation resulted in a fracture to Ms. Jabbari’s middle finger on her right hand, as well as pain and swelling in her arm and right ear, Mr. Perez said.

Mr. Perez viewed the attack as the natural finale of a relationship that turned violent shortly after it began, two years before the attack. He said Mr. Majors and Ms. Jabbari met on the set of a Marvel movie in 2021 and went through a short-lived “honeymoon phase.”

“Just months into the relationship, the evidence will show that the defendant’s true self emerged,” Mr. Perez said, telling jurors that Mr. Majors yelled at Ms. Jabbari and threw household items against the wall during one argument had thrown, causing the glass to break. .

Mr. Majors, dressed in a dark suit with a gilded Bible and a large folder on the table in front of him, spent much of Mr. Perez’s argument facing the front of the courtroom, his face blank. A jury of three men and three women listened attentively. (Misdemeanor trials are typically heard by six jurors, rather than twelve.)

Ms Chaudhry echoed the prosecution in her opening, saying the altercation started when Mr Majors received a text message. But she said her client had been a victim.

He was, she said, “punched, clawed and scratched by Grace Jabbari in a manner that caused the driver, the only witness to this event, to describe Ms. Jabbari as ‘psycho girl.’”

When Mr. Majors left to spend the night at a hotel — texting Ms. Jabbari to end their relationship — Ms. Jabbari went dancing with people she had met that night, Ms. Chaudhry told jurors.

The video shows Ms. Jabbari making people “twirl her ballroom style while twirling the finger she now claims is newly broken,” Ms. Chaudhry said.

She concluded by accusing Ms. Jabbari of seeking revenge for a broken relationship.

“She has made these false allegations to ruin Jonathan Majors and take away everything he has worked for all his life,” Ms Chaudhry said.

Mr Majors filed his own complaint against Ms Jabbari, and last month she was arrested and charged with assault and criminal mischief. The district attorney’s office declined to pursue the case, saying in a statement that it lacked “prosecutive capacity.”

During pre-trial hearings, prosecutors asked the judge to prevent the defense from reporting Ms. Jabbari’s arrest. But Ms Chaudhry argued that the dismissal of the case showed they had ignored Mr Majors’ perspective.

The judge, Michael Gaffey, ultimately agreed to allow her to discuss Ms. Jabbari’s arrest, but called the situation “very unusual” and noted that Ms. Chaudhry had not reported the altercation until three months after the altercation the police.

On Monday, Mr. Perez published the police report as an extension of Mr. Majors’ efforts to control and manipulate Ms. Jabbari.

The couple met on the set of the movie ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’, in which Mr. Majors played the time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror. Mr. Majors, who had received an Emmy nomination for his role in the series “Lovecraft Country,” was quickly on his way to A-list celebrity. But the charges put his career on hold.

Before proceedings on Monday, Mr Majors greeted several rows of supporters, leaning over and kissing at least six people. Several of Ms. Jabbari’s relatives were also present, although Ms. Jabbari herself, who is expected to testify, was not present.