Following high school, Jonathan attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), where he got his Bachelor of Fine Arts. After graduating in 2012, he enrolled at the Yale School of Drama, and during his final semester, he landed his first major role: young Ken Jones on ABC's When We Rise. "My final semester at Yale, I was picked by Gus Van Sant to play one of the leads in the miniseries he and Dustin Lance Black were collaborating on," he explained to Backstage in December 2019. "I did my final semester of [school] work in a trailer in Vancouver on set with Gus Van Sant."