Jonathan Majors skips testifying to go straight to weepy post-verdict interviews

If you had to guess, why do you think Jonathan Majors’ team declined to put him on the stand during his domestic trial but did put him on television before his sentencing? On ABC (a subsidiary of Disney, a company from which Majors was recently fired) there is no cross-examination; there is no swearing on the Bible (a book Majors conspicuously carried around with him the entire trial) to tell nothing but the truth. There’s just an actor—a very good actor—getting to tell his version of events, almost entirely unfettered and in dramatic fashion. In his first interview since being accused of abuse by ex Grace Jabbari, Majors cries, Majors denies, Majors promises to appeal the guilty verdict for reckless assault. “I was reckless with her heart, not with her body,” he proclaims, because of course he does.

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The contents of Majors’ interview on Good Morning America are entirely unsurprising. Majors regrets trying to put Jabbari back in the car. Majors regrets not breaking up with Jabbari sooner, because then he wouldn’t have been in the car with her in the first place. Majors claims he never hit Jabbari or any woman ever. So how did Jabbari get the injuries for which she was treated after their altercation? “I wish to god I knew. That would give clarity. That would give me some type of peace about it,” he says (via ABC News).

The New York District Attorney’s office presented damning evidence of the context of the couple’s relationship, painting a portrait of Majors that was controlling and emotionally abusive. Text messages regarding Jabbari’s injuries from a prior incident showed Majors discouraging her from seeking medical help, implying previous violence in the relationship, but the actor claims those injuries were fake. “I received these text messages and I was like, ‘This is literally a nightmare.’ I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what injuries you’re talking about,” he says. As for telling her not to go to the hospital: “From my experience, from my point of view, a young Black man in any situation with anyone honestly, if the authorities get involved in any way, there’s going to be conversation, conflict, trauma.”

Conflict already existed in the relationship, as evidenced by the bizarre recording played in court of a belligerent Majors lecturing Jabbari about how he’s a “great man” and that she should support him more like Coretta Scott King or Michelle Obama. “It was me trying to give an analogy of what it is I’m aspiring to be, you know, these great men—Martin, President Obama—and trying to give a reference point to that. ​I need her, in that case, Grace, to make the same sacrifices I am making,” Majors explains now. “I was attempting, and I did a terrible job at it apparently, I was attempting to motivate, to enlighten, to give perspective as in to what it is I was hoping to get out of the relationship.” (His current girlfriend, actor Meagan Good, has “held me down like Coretta,” he adds later, so dreams do come true.)

Majors hopes for a second chance in Hollywood, but for now, “Everything has kinda gone away. And it’s just me now, you know, and my lovely, you know, partner, Meagan, and my dogs,” he says. He hasn’t seen his daughter since the case began; “the world stopped” when he lost the role of Kang the Conqueror at Marvel Studios. Disney, meanwhile, is heavily cashing in on its former employee, airing the interview on Good Morning America, additional segments on GMA3, an extended version on the ABC News Live program Prime, and another half-hour special with more unaired material on IMPACT x Nightline on January 11 (per The Hollywood Reporter).

For now, Majors says he was “shocked and afraid” upon hearing the guilty verdict. But Grace Jabbari’s legal team says, “His denigration of our jury system is not dissimilar from the above-the-law attitude that he has maintained throughout this legal process” in a statement to ABC News. “The timing of these new statements demonstrates a clear lack of remorse for the actions for which he was found guilty and should make the sentencing decisions fairly easy for the Court.”