The actor Jonathan Majors implored his former girlfriend not to seek medical help after she sustained a head injury in an unspecified incident in London last year, telling her, “I fear you have no perspective of what could happen if you go to the hospital.”
The comment was among several included in previously undisclosed text messages that were read into the record on Friday as Mr. Majors’s ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, completed her testimony at the actor’s assault trial in Manhattan state court.
Mr. Majors was charged in March with misdemeanor assault and harassment. Prosecutors say he attacked Ms. Jabbari during a car ride to his home, slapping her face, grabbing her hand violently and throwing her back into the car after she exited the vehicle.
A rising Hollywood star at the time of his arrest, Mr. Majors has seen his career stall in the months since. He has taken the unusual step of going to trial on a misdemeanor charge in a bid to prove his innocence and salvage his professional reputation.
The text exchanges disclosed in court on Friday occurred in September 2022, about six months before the altercation that led to the charges Mr. Majors now faces. His lawyer has argued that the actor was the victim in the attack, not the aggressor.
Details about the incident that preceded the texts, which were displayed on a screen in court while Ms. Jabbari testified, were not made public.
But in an October court filing, prosecutors cited a London Metropolitan Police report that contained “medical records from London related to an incident that occurred in September 2022.” Ms. Jabbari testified that she and Mr. Majors were living together in London at the time.
On Friday, Ms. Jabbari began to read the texts aloud for the jury. She only got through a few lines before beginning to cry. A prosecutor, Kelli Galaway, continued the recitation.
Referring to whether Ms. Jabbari should seek treatment at a hospital, Mr. Majors wrote to her that “they will ask you questions, and as I don’t think you actually protect us, it could lead to an investigation even if you do lie and they suspect something.”
Mr. Jabbari responded that she couldn’t sleep, that she needed stronger painkillers and that she would say that she had bumped her head if she wound up going to the hospital.
“Why would I tell them what really happened when it’s clear I want to be with you,” she wrote, adding that she would not go to a hospital if Mr. Majors did not feel safe about her doing so.
In another of the texts read in court, Mr. Majors wrote to Ms. Jabbari that he had “considered killing myself versus coming home” the night before.
The judge overseeing the case, Michael Gaffey, had ruled before Ms. Jabbari took the witness stand that prosecutors could not introduce the text messages as evidence during the trial. But a line of questioning by Mr. Majors’s lawyer, Priya Chaudhry, during cross-examination on Thursday had “opened the door” to admitting the texts.
During that questioning, Ms. Jabbari said she had been trying to protect Mr. Majors when she refrained from giving doctors at Bellevue Hospital all of the details about the cause of the injuries she sustained in the March altercation.
“I was scared of the consequences of it,” she said in response to a question from Ms. Galaway. “What I would say and how that would affect him.”
Prosecutors said during their opening statement this week that Mr. Majors had been abusive to Ms. Jabbari throughout their relationship.
At the start of her testimony, Ms. Jabbari described more than a half-dozen episodes that she said had begun in December 2021, several months into her relationship with Mr. Majors, including one in which he threw a candle at her, denting a wall near where she stood.