It’s been a bad week for abusive, famous men, which means a good week for the rest of us. Jonathan Majors, who plays Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was recently dropped by his talent manager Entertainment 360 and his PR firm The Lede Company. This happened weeks after Majors was arrested on domestic violence charges in New York City. The victim informed police she had been assaulted and was taken to a nearby hospital to treat minor injuries to her head and neck. Majors’ attorney later said that he was completely innocent and, in fact, was the victim.
The attorney later released a set of text messages to the press in which the woman said “They said they had to arrest you as protocol when they saw the injuries on me and they knew we had a fight. I’m so angry that they did” and “Will make sure nothing happens about this. I told them it was my fault for trying to grab your phone.” It’s not my place to say if he assaulted this woman or not, but the texts do not explicitly say that Majors was innocent, only that the woman was injured and blamed herself for instigating. It has been weeks and Majors’ attorney has not released evidence that Majors is innocent, despite claiming that there is video footage and witness testimony of the incident, as well as written statements from the woman recanting her allegations.
Majors’ arrest for assault threw a wrench in the Marvel machine, but it might have fallen out of the news cycle had he not been dropped by his own representation over the incident. I’m glad he’s facing consequences for this alleged assault – while everything the public knows about this is based on hearsay, people on Twitter have previously called him out for abusive behaviour and said he’s well-known in the NYC community and Yale, where he did his Masters in Fine Arts, for being a “sociopath and abuser”.
He’s not the only actor who was called out this week – it was just reported by Rolling Stone that F. Murray Abraham was booted off Apple TV’s Mythic Quest in April 2022 because sexual misconduct complaints had been raised against him at least twice. The first resulted in him being given a warning and told to keep away from some of the show’s actresses, and the second led to his dismissal. Abraham’s exit was worked into a send-off for his character. “It’s a bummer to not have Murray in this season,” Rob McElhenney, the show’s star and creator told Variety. “But we recognize that C.W. is a beloved character and obviously a huge part of the show. So, we made sure that we have a really fitting tribute to him.”
David Choe, as well, has been under fire for comments he made on his now-defunct podcast with adult film actress Asa Akira, DVDASA. In the 2014 episode, Choe told a story where he performed sex acts in front of a masseuse while she protested, then forced her to perform oral sex on him. He labeled this “rapey behaviour” and also said, “I go back to the chill method of: you never ask first, you just do it, get in trouble and then pay the price later.” When people, understandably, were upset, he walked it back in a statement saying, “I never thought I’d wake up one late afternoon and hear myself called a rapist” and that the story wasn’t true at all, as the podcast is “a complete extension of my art”. He insisted that he was not a rapist, and said, “I’m sorry if anyone believed that the stories were fact. They were not!”
The clips have fallen in and out of the public consciousness since 2014, with the issue rising again in 2017 after a mural he painted was vandalised. He denied again that he had done the act, and said, “I am deeply sorry for any hurt I’ve brought to anyone through my past words. Non-consensual sex is rape and it is never funny or appropriate to joke about.” They’ve now resurfaced as Beef, A24’s critically lauded Netflix series has launched to prominence, bringing Choe to the limelight once again. These allegations are not new – in fact, they’re right on Choe’s Wikipedia page, where they’ve been since 2014, according to the page’s version history. Choe has been using copyright takedowns to have clips of the incident removed from tweets blasting him online.
The problem does not lie only with abusive men existing in Hollywood – abusive men are everywhere, and as long as they are given power, they are made more dangerous. The problem lies with Hollywood institutions giving abusive men passes to act how they want to, and giving them platforms to thrive. David Choe should never have been hired, considering his words have been public knowledge for almost a decade and could have been unearthed with a cursory internet search. Whether or not he actually did it isn’t the point. He told this story and invented a character around it as his defence when it blew up in his face. He thought it was funny to graphically describe himself sexually assaulting a woman, then insisted he didn’t understand why people thought he actually did it. He was in his mid-30s at the time, so there is no cover of youth. He simply thought it appropriate as “part of his art”. There are better ways to make art than by enabling rape culture.
Apart from bad ethics, it’s bad optics. The controversy now overshadows what is widely considered to be an excellent TV series, an exceptional achievement for a Netflix exclusive. Though, if the producers brought him on, I find it difficult to believe they didn’t know about it – maybe the backlash is entirely warranted if it was done knowing how audiences would feel about it. A calculation must have been done, deciding that bolstering Choe’s reputation was a worthy risk to take. The fact that nobody on the show has spoken up about the resurfaced controversy is damning in its own right. Now people are boycotting what is, by all accounts, a very good television show, all because the producers chose to hire somebody who, at some point in his adult life, thought it would be funny to describe himself raping a woman.
It’s the same with Majors and Abraham. While neither has faced public controversy of this nature before, that doesn’t mean that their behaviour isn’t part of a pattern. It simply means nobody has spoken out about it before this. Abraham has gotten off relatively unscathed for now. Perhaps reports of his sexual misconduct will be what gets him to finally retire – he is 83, and has been a prolific actor on film, television and stage since 1960. I have serious doubts that this will have any major impact on what’s left of his career. Mythic Quest handled the issue quickly, paying tribute to his character in the process. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with simply writing a character out and the writers handled it quickly, though I’d like to qualify this by saying I have never watched Mythic Quest.
What I do worry about is how Marvel will handle the allegations against Majors – or rather, if it will handle them at all. Marvel has already successfully waited out controversy with Jeremy Renner, when in 2019 his ex-wife accused him of physical abuse and threatening to kill her, as well as emotionally, physically, and sexually abusing their daughter. This isn’t even mentioned on Renner’s Wikipedia page anymore, speaking to the power Disney has to shape the narratives around its stars. Renner’s character, Hawkeye, continued to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe until 2021, even getting his own show.
I’m hoping we will not see the same thing happen with Majors, who plays Kang, the primary villain in phases five and six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s already appeared in Loki’s first season, as well as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and has reportedly filmed Loki’s second season, which is scheduled to release this year. He’s supposed to be in the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, and given the Marvel pattern, that also means he’ll be scheduled for appearances in other movies leading up to Avengers. It’s likely far too late for Kang to be written out of the movies altogether, so there won’t be any neat resolution like the one Abraham’s character received. If Marvel chooses to address this, it will likely have to recast Kang, which could delay the films depending on how much preparation work it has already done.
There’s no getting around it because Majors is currently a huge part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe already. It would be far more convenient for Marvel to ignore this entirely and hope the allegations fade away once again, instead of recasting him or writing him out and potentially having to delay their films. However, the backlash against Majors is rising – he's already been dropped from several projects – and there’s a chance that the already damaged Marvel Cinematic Universe will buckle under the weight of their big star being avalanched with bad press. After all, many people cited Majors as the only good part of Quantumania. If people don’t want to see him, and Marvel movies are consistently getting worse, what will audiences be going to see?
Abusive actors have always been in Hollywood, but now, people are able to speak up about their experiences with the knowledge that the public will actually care, if only for a little while. Mainstream viewers are more willing to boycott media, and talking about them to build momentum is easier than ever online these days, which sends the message that these things matter to audiences. When people hire abusive actors, they are banking on the public being apathetic. They are supporting and protecting abusive actors, while those actors hurt others and their controversies overshadow the quality of the art being made. They can damage the reputation of franchises you love, leading to delays or a lower audience count at launch. There’s an easy fix – Hollywood can start taking accountability for the power it has notoriously given famous abusers, instead of shielding them and keeping them rich. Maybe one day.