Bryan Batt: The Gay Blade of ‘Mad Men”

Tracing back through various struggles with his sexuality, Sal starts off with that friendly, kind advance from the cosmetics executive ...
Yeah! Where’s he? That’s who he should be with.

Then he had his own kind of crush on Ken Cosgrove [Aaron Staton].
I don’t think that was sexual, that was just this ...

Sort of a harmless infatuation.
Exactly.

Then there’s the hotel bellhop when Sal and Don are on the business trip, which Don accidentally sees. Then he ends up with this very predatory Lucky Strike executive.
Yeah, very predatory.

So what you do make of the progression?
I think it’s great. I want it to continue. It’s very interesting, if Sal keeps on going, in that day and era—becoming almost like Don and having a dual life. He will have the wife, and then on the side have a lover and come to terms with it.

And ultimately, Don’s secret is much more damning than Sal’s.
Oh, yeah.

As a New Orleans native, with strong local connections with your family and your history there, can you talk about your personal experience during Hurricane Katrina?
Oh, sure. We were actually on vacation and could not get back. They boarded up my house and drove my mother to Texas. The minute I saw that thing in the Gulf, I said, “Mom, where are you going?” And she said, “I have a plane, don’t worry,” and it got cancelled. I flew to LA the day of Katrina for an audition .. that day we were fine, the day it hit. The next 24 hours, it was a nightmare, I was at a restaurant and a friend called and said, “Oh my god, are you okay, is everyone okay?” and I was like, “What are you talking about? It’s fine.” And he said, “No, Bryan there are waves going down Canal Street.” And I kind of broke down, on the street. I was like—that’s it. And again, it was a beautiful vacation the first week, the second week was just numbing—on the internet all the time trying to find people, making sure everyone was okay and not knowing. It was like living through 9/11 all over again, totally helpless and not having information.

How long did you have to stay away from New Orleans?
We didn’t get back until the end of October. Tom got back to put up the store, and that was the day after they opened up the city, the day you could get back. We went once before because it was a day they said you could get in, and of course, the general said “No you can’t,” and everyone was down there trying to get in, it was crazy. However, the cute factor went up that day in New Orleans because all the National Guards there. But it was insane driving through this city where usually there would be a main thoroughfare, and no one was there. There’s a water line, it’s dirty, it looks like death, cars are all over the place that had floated around. It was like Armageddon. It seems like eons ago. There’s a part of yourself you just have to close off ... you can’t go to that anguish all the time, or you’ll just be a mess. But it is a miracle, what has happened. And the American people are still coming down to help in New Orleans, and it’s just amazing. More restaurants have opened than ever before—the music is back.

Last year, I interviewed Janie Bryant about the costumes for the show.
The goddess of all things costume.

One of the things I asked her was to imagine a contemporary version of each Mad Men character and what they would wear. So for ,Sal she said Gucci and Yves St. Laurent.
Exactly! Perfect. Yeah, Sal is very very dapper. One of my favorite things on the show is waiting to see what she has for me and the initial fitting. And that’s not because it’s Sal—everyone has that. You wouldn’t wear the same suit every day to work, but shoes were much more expensive, so you didn’t have tons of shoes. So you go in and they have all these vintage clothes, and you just see suit after suit after suit.

Sal is famous for wearing his separates.
I love that. The use of texture, the color, the patterns they’re very simple. One of my favorite things she ever did was when she knew all about New Orleans, and we filmed the pilot in 2006—that was the spring after Katrina, so I could still feel it deep in my gut. Janie gave me a vest with fleur-de-lis on it.