Jonathan Majors, Film career in the balance, is tried in the assault case

An actor who was on the brink of superstardom when Manhattan prosecutors accused him of assaulting his then-girlfriend will go on trial Wednesday in an effort to keep his career alive in an unusual proceeding expected to draw national attention.

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

The arrest froze Mr.’s meteoric rise. Majors in the film industry, where he was about to present several Marvel films and await the wide release of a star vehicle, “Magazine Dreams”, which is now in limbo. While it is unusual for an assault charge to go to trial — the vast majority of defendants plead guilty to avoid facing a harsher sentence — Mr. Majors is fighting to prove his innocence and save his reputation in Hollywood.

His lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, has aggressively defended him, calling Ms Jabbari a liar who has attacked Mr Majors.

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

Jury selection starts Wednesday after the trial date was postponed several times. It is unclear how long the process will take; such procedures can take anywhere from a few weeks to more than a month.

Prosecutors are expected to call several of Mr. Majors’ former girlfriends as witnesses to testify about their experiences with him, according to people with knowledge of the case and court documents filed by the district attorney’s office. The identities of those witnesses have not been made public and the judge will decide whether to allow their testimony.

In their filings, prosecutors detail their allegations against Mr. Majors, saying the altercation with Ms. Jabbari began shortly after midnight on March 25, when she saw a message on his cell phone that read, “I wish I kissed you right now.”

When Ms. Jabbari picked up the phone, prosecutors say, Mr. Majors attacked her, taking her finger off the phone, twisting her forearm and punching her right ear.

Mr Majors’ 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 gone into a “wild rage”, clawing and punching Mr Majors in the face and scratching his arm.

The filing makes no mention of any physical retaliation by Mr. Majors and says that after the confrontation, Ms. Jabbari went out to the club while he planned to stay at a hotel. She later returned to Mr Majors’ home and called him numerous times from there, threatening to harm herself, Ms Chaudhry said in the application. When Mr. Majors returned home, the file shows, he found Ms. Jabbari lying on the floor of his walk-in closet and noticed that her ear was cut and her finger was bruised.

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

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

Jurors will have to judge the truth of each story. Ms. Jabbari is expected to testify, and while it is not clear whether Mr. Majors will as well, it would create a scene of unusual interest: a skilled actor trying to convince a jury of his credibility and innocence.

Hollywood has struggled to create a new generation of leading men who can be the successors to older, strong men like Harrison Ford and Denzel Washington, and Mr. Majors was seen by studio executives as the only solution to the problem.

Starting in 2019 with the independent film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” his rise has been meteoric. He starred in the 2020 HBO series “Lovecraft Country” and quickly rose to blockbuster filmmaking, with critically acclaimed performances in “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

“Magazine Dreams,” about a troubled aspiring bodybuilder, was acquired at this year’s Sundance Film Festival by Searchlight Pictures, a Disney subsidiary. The film was originally scheduled for release this fall and is widely considered a potential Oscar contender.

But Mr Majors’ legal troubles have dimmed managers’ hopes for him. Searchlight has removed “Magazine Dreams” from its release schedule. Marvel Studios, which planned to make several films based on the villainous character he played in “Quantumania,” has been waiting for the outcome of the criminal case before deciding whether to proceed.

The case also presents an unexpected test for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, who has not commented publicly 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 tried to undermine his accuser as lacking credibility.

Ms Chaudhry then attacked Mr Bragg, who is black, directly and linked Mr Foss’s case to that of Mr Majors.

“There is a troubling trend within Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to weaponize charges against a black man accused by a white woman,” she said in a statement, accusing the office of erring toward “character assassination and publicity-driven persecution.”

Brooks Barnes reporting contributed.