How to Plan a Press Tour for a Canceled Man
When Magazine Dreams debuted at Sundance 2023, critics were sure they had seen one of the defining screen performances of the year. The film, a 21st-century spin on Taxi Driver, stars Jonathan Majors as a mentally ill bodybuilder, and consensus in Park City was that the performance was liable to cement Majors as his generation’s next great talent. Vanity Fair dubbed it “a towering act of becoming,” while Entertainment Weekly called Majors “impossible to look away from.” With his role as the antagonist in Creed III and a turn as the supervillain Kang the Conqueror in the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the horizon, Majors had already nailed down the blockbuster side of his résumé. In Magazine Dreams, he’d found a complex and challenging lead role that, the New York Times predicted, could make him a “formidable” Oscar contender.
That did not happen. Months later, Majors was arrested for assaulting his then-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari, precipitating a swift public downfall. The actor was dropped by his management and publicity firms, and Marvel abandoned plans to make Kang the Conqueror the central villain of the next Avengers saga. In court, Majors was found guilty of one count of third-degree assault and one count of second-degree harassment, both misdemeanors. He was sentenced to 52 weeks of domestic-violence counseling and put on probation. Searchlight, which had acquired Magazine Dreams out of Sundance, dropped the movie.
Two years after Majors’s arrest, Magazine Dreams is finally being released, having been picked up by Briarcliff, a small distributor that specializes in distressed cinematic assets. Which means that Majors is back now, too. This month, the actor has embarked on a wide-ranging press tour, promoting both the film and his wider comeback. As Majors’s most sustained moment in the public eye since his conviction, the promo campaign is, in all likelihood, the fruit of months of behind-the-scenes planning by the actor and a team of crisis-PR consultants, who specialize in what’s known as “strategic communications.” (I’ve heard that Majors is working with a firm called the Initiative Group; the company did not respond to a request for confirmation.) To get a sense of what this process is like, I spoke to a handful of crisis-PR executives, some on-the-record and some on background, to find out the blueprint for planning a press tour for a canceled man.
The field of crisis management has exploded recently. Some blame Harvey Weinstein for this; others pin it on Ray Donovan and Scandal. Many of those I spoke to noted that it was all too easy (and profitable) for any run-of-the-mill PR firm to rebrand itself as a strategic-comms specialist, though they assured me that they themselves were one of the legitimate ones. “It became something that firms needed to put on their website as a bullet point,” says Evan Nierman, founder and CEO of Red Banyan. “Everybody wants to wear the white hat, but not everybody can actually do the work,” says crisis-management consultant Holly Baird.
The experts had their own internal rubrics for determining whether it would be worth taking on a client like Majors. For some, the calculus hinged on whether they had an existing relationship, which would lower the bar for signing on. But ultimately, all said some variation of the same thing: They would have to believe that the canceled man was sincerely committed to becoming better. “I would want to see how he’s taking care of himself,” says Danny Deraney, founder of Deraney Public Relations. “Have you gone to therapy? Do you need anger management? Are you over-drinking?” says Baird. Many were keen to emphasize that there are some moral lines they would not cross. “If I think the person’s lying to me, then I’m not interested in representing them,” says Nierman. “If the topic happened to be underage children, I don’t want to go near that,” says Juda Engelmayer, a crisis-communications expert whose most famous client is Harvey Weinstein.
Nearly all were convinced Majors had done the work necessary to be a viable rehabilitation project. “He’s owning it,” Nierman says. “He’s not trying to say that it was a false conviction, that he got screwed over by a jury.” (That is not entirely true — though Majors says he is barred from publicly commenting on the case, in a 2024 interview with Good Morning America, he did claim he had “never hit a woman.”)
The next step is to craft a compelling narrative for the client. “You only get one real bite at the redemption apple,” says Nierman. Ideally, this narrative is grounded in the truth — or at least, some version of the truth. This process starts with long, difficult conversations. “My strategy is based on empathy,” says Engelmayer. “I sit there and listen to somebody, and really understand and distill what they’re saying. Then I have to go figure out the right narrative and how to present it to a broad audience. I have to soul-search a little bit: I go through a lot of writing exercises, maybe talk with my girlfriend or my kids, to see whether or not it’s something that they would roll their eyes at.”
To a man (or woman), the experts praised Majors and his team for telling a clear, concise story. “They’re using all the hot-button words,” says Baird, approvingly. “He’s doing the internal work, he’s re-evaluating the community that he has. He’s working a key balance: acknowledging the past misstep, but then outlining what he’s been doing moving forward.”
Getting Majors there likely required months of intense media training. “It looks a lot like how you prep a candidate before a televised debate,” says Nierman, who has consulted on past presidential campaigns. “We put together a set of questions to do test runs on how he interviews,” says Baird. “Is he moving his legs? Is he twitching? Is he scratching his head? Does he move his eyes? Does he not look directly at the person asking questions? What would potentially make him look like he’s not being truthful?”
In the spring of 2024, shortly after his conviction, Majors began showing up at red carpets again. He made his first public appearance alongside his new fiancee, actress Meagan Good, at the African American Film Critics Association’s pre-Oscar luncheon. Weeks later, the couple popped up at the NAACP Image Awards. “That was their test run, for sure,” says Baird, who ventures that these appearances were an experiment to see how Majors held up under pressure. “Those red carpets are very cruel. A lot of reporters will make crazy comments and ask you crazy questions.” She says she’s seen many scandal-plagued celebrities pushed into a press tour before they’re ready. “They storm off of interviews, they look frightened, they stumble with their words. It just sounds like a bunch of baloney.”
Sometimes you pay an influencer. Anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000.
(A few months before these appearances, Majors was caught on video breaking up a fight between two teenage girls at an In-N-Out. The experts do not believe this was pre-planned. Says Nierman: “To me, the risks of that backfiring are too great.”)
For a celebrity whose case has played out as publicly as Majors’s has, there are no expectations of friendly press. “Since 2015, there is a great need for cancellation content among the media. It’s a highly leveraged headline,” says Ross Johnson, founder of Johnson Public Relations. “Most media is not going to be friendly. And I don’t mean that they’re mean; I mean, they’re all going to do a jazzy headline that’s going to get them clicks,” says Engelmayer. Still, much of a crisis expert’s job remains building relationships with the press. “Saying you find the friendliest writer is not as accurate as saying you find the appropriate writer,” he says. “Not necessarily someone who will buy it hook, line, and sinker, but who will at least hear you and not just brush it off.”
“Everything is give-and-take,” Nierman says. “People who don’t work in media would be surprised at the level of back-and-forth that happens.” The stereotype of the pushy publicist ready to cut off any uncomfortable questions has some basis in reality, but in a true crisis situation, that strategy may be counterproductive. “If I were advising clients, I would say our energy is best spent making sure that they’re prepared to answer every question that comes their way, as opposed to focusing on the outlet and trying to convince, coerce, or influence them.”
The world of social media has opened up exciting new avenues for crisis communications. “Every journalist in the world can hate you, but if you have 3 million fans who consistently love you, then they’re the ones you want to rely on,” says Engelmayer. Today’s publicists can easily backchannel with fans who boast significant online followings of their own to get a sense of whether they’re willing to help the cause. “Not anything underhanded, but you can see if they’re willing to look at things that the media hasn’t shown them.”
“And sometimes you pay an influencer,” he adds. The going rate? “Anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000.”
Still, all agree there’s merit in the old ways: choosing a buzzy mainstream outlet and giving them an exclusive. To kick off his press tour, Majors appeared on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter, where he revealed for the first time that he had been sexually abused as a child. “Getting candid about painful topics from the past, not to excuse what he did, but at least to provide some context — I think that’s very important,” says Nierman. “He’s opening up the aperture of who he is as a person.” The experts praised Majors and his team’s choice of venue — a trade publication read by the industry power brokers who will decide his future — and writer. “Rebecca Keegan’s a respected reporter,” says Johnson. “She is not someone who is beholden to writing nice PR stories for stars. She delved into the gray areas.”
The piece also featured quotes from Whoopi Goldberg, Michael B. Jordan, and Matthew McConaughey attesting to Majors’s character. “Once one person has the audacity to support someone in Hollywood, it seems a lot of people step forward,” says Baird.
Majors followed up the THR story with a full-scale push, sitting for a press junket, TV interviews, and a spot on The Breakfast Club, emphasizing his trust in God and desire to return to the MCU. The pros are divided on the wisdom of the full-bore approach. “I don’t like the big press push,” says Deraney. “I would’ve spoken to one or two outlets, maybe like a broadcast and a print. There shouldn’t be this ginormous push. It’s like you’re forcing an opinion on the public.”
Baird disagrees with other experts’ concerns about potential overexposure. “Were these other experts white or Black?” she asks me. “The Black community in general, and how Black celebrities are perceived, is a lot different. The Black community tends to forgive and forget a lot easier. You have got to go to the smaller blogs because that is where a lot of the Black community are watching.” She notes that Majors’s team have been careful to book him on “women-friendly platforms” such as Sherri Shepherd’s talk show, where he was accompanied by Good. Her presence doesn’t just soften his public image, but also acts as a subtle page-turn from Majors’s previous interracial relationships, Baird says. “They’re re-immersing him back into the Black community. They’ve brought him home, in a sense.”
Days after Majors’s THR interview went to press, another bombshell dropped, when Rolling Stone published audio from 2022 of the actor seemingly admitting to strangling Jabbari. His team swiftly went into damage-control mode, using Majors’s appearance on Sherri to reveal that he and Good had secretly gotten married. Nevertheless, the comms people I spoke to afterward mostly agreed that the tape had put his comeback in jeopardy. From where I was sitting, the audio pulled the conversation out of the theoretical — lofty talk about mistakes and redemption — and back into the realm of the physical: a man’s hands around a woman’s throat. The crisis experts phrased it differently. “It totally killed their headline,” said Johnson. “The average fan is not reading [the story] saying, ‘Oh my God, they just want to destroy him again.’ They’re like, He’s just a shithead.” Engelmayer said. “It’s going to take a while before he bounces back from this.”
None of them was ready to write Majors off completely. There would always be someone willing to take a bet on the kind of talent he showed during his come-up. “He can keep working,” says Johnson. “But it can be so exhausting trying to claw your way back to where you were before your reputation was ruined.” Magazine Dreams once seemed like Majors’s ticket to the Oscars stage. Now it was his lifeline. In Hollywood, “we follow the money,” Johnson said in the days leading up to the film’s wide release. “If he can do $7,000 per theater, this whole thing could change very quickly.”
On Monday, the receipts came in: The film grossed $700,000 in 815 theaters, a per-theater average of $858.
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