[SPOILER WARNING: The following story contains spoilers from the most recent episode of Mad Men.]
"My jaw dropped; my heart sunk," Bryan Batt tells TVGuide.com of his reaction to reading a climactic scene from Sunday's episode of Mad Men between Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Salvatore Romano. "It's so heartbreaking."
When one of Sterling Cooper's most lucrative clients propositions Sal, Sal turns him down, which leads the client, the heir to the Lucky Strike cigarette fortune, to insist upon Sal's dismissal. It's particularly unsettling that Don does the firing, since it was he who witnessed Sal's near-romp in Baltimore and warned him only to "limit [his] exposure." Batt said Sal's real shock is the realization that he no longer has an ally in Don.
Mad Men's Bryan Batt on his jaw-dropping scene
"I do feel Sal felt very betrayed because there are many different options that could have come into play to save his job, but none of that was exercised," Batt says. "Don didn't do anything; he basically washed his hands and did not believe Sal when he told him the honest truth. It's the ultimate case of sexual harassment meets homophobia. Sal is completely innocent. He played by the rules, he did what he's supposed to do, and he gets punished for it. It's quite sad."
The million-dollar question, of course, is whether we've seen the last of Sal. Batt is expectedly tight-lipped, but he thinks viewers shouldn't lose all faith...
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Despite reports to the contrary, Mad Men star Bryan Batt is not getting married to his longtime partner, his rep tells TVGuide.com.
Several news outlets cited a National Enquirer report saying Batt and Tom Cianfichi, an event planner, were planning a Christmas ...
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It's been a long eight months since we last glimpsed the goings-on inside Mad Men's Sterling Cooper, but Bryan Batt promises that rabid "Maddicts" will be rewarded for their patience.
"I haven't seen [the finished product] yet, but just based on the script, it's really an exciting first episode," Batt tells TVGuide.com. "It doesn't lull you back into the period. Really, a lot happens, and I just can't wait to see what people think because it's one of the best. It's interesting, it's smart... It's just more great Mad Men coming your way."
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Batt says his character, closeted art director Salvatore Romano, is pretty much in the same place he was last season. Of course, those 13 episodes were a roller coaster for Sal, who...
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As glittery and shiny as the spanking new 1962 Coupe de Ville that Don Draper buys (and whose new-car smell Betty ruins in the stunningly appropriate final scene of Sunday's episode), as rich and textured and ambiguous as the modernist Mark Rothko painting Cooper displays in his office, AMC's Mad Men is firing on all cylinders midway through its second season. Sunday's brilliantly structured episode, another home run in a recent string of winners, had me looking anew at the show as a work of art, something transcending mere TV. I could devote an entire column to quoting great, meaningful, loaded dialogue from this episode. Surely they'll publish collected scripts of Mad Men some day. It will make great reading, possibly even as satisfying as watching it.
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Salvatore is... married? Really? As Bryan Batt quipped just before taping this video, "There are now two guys with beards at Sterling Cooper. In this video, the Mad Men star shares a look at the debonair art director's complicated love life and teases more about the rest of this season. — Matt Mitovich
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