Author: Jake Coyle Associated Press

Throughout the implosion of his once-skyrocketing Hollywood career, from his arrest almost exactly two years ago to his harassment and assault conviction, Jonathan Majors has maintained that he has never struck a woman. But on Monday, as Majors was in the midst of a comeback attempt and a PR push that returned him to magazine covers, Rolling Stone published an audio recording of a conversation between Majors and Grace Jabbari. Majors was found guilty of one misdemeanor assault charge and one harassment violation for striking Jabbari in the head with an open hand and breaking her middle finger by squeezing it. “I aggressed you,” Majors acknowledges in the recording, confirming her description of him strangling her and pushing her against a car. The recording appeared to contradict Majors’ previous claims and upend his redemption tour just as his film “Magazine Dreams” opens in theaters Friday. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Majors declined to address the recording, and whether he has assaulted women. “I can’t answer that,” Majors responded. “I can’t speak to that.” Majors says he’s changed, but not everyone is convinced Majors, who was sentenced to probation and settled a lawsuit with Jabbari in November, is striving for an unusually swift rebound following a precipitous downfall. Before his March 2023 arrest, Majors was steering toward years of Marvel stardom and a possible Oscar nomination for Elijah Bynum’s “Magazine Dreams,” in which he plays a disturbed aspiring bodybuilder prone to violent outbursts. Two years later, Majors returns to the public eye with a pledge that he’s changed just months after completing a year of court-ordered domestic violence counseling. At the same time, he’s not directly addressing any of the allegations against him — including those from two previous partners, Emma Duncan and Maura Hooper, who in statements submitted pretrial, detailed physically violent and emotionally abusive incidents that bear some similarities to the Jabbari case. “It’s not something I can talk about