Bryan Batt talks to TV Guide.com about his gay character and the new season of “Mad Men”

If I ever think being a gay man is tough in 2009, just imagine being in the early 60s.

Egads! You certainly didn’t come out at work if you wanted to keep your job and probably married some poor unsuspecting woman. Well, I don’t have a job to be fired from and if I marry anybody, it’ll be to the man I love – if I ever find him! and hopefully it’ll be in California sometime after 2010!

All that is my meandering lead-in to an interview TVGuide.com did recently did with out actor Bryan Batt who plays closeted ad company art director Salvatore Romano on AMC’s brilliant drama Man Men.

“People come up to me and ask when Sal is coming out. And I say to them, “To what?” Batt tells TV Guide.. “In 1960 and 1962, what was there for him to come out to? There was no gay movement, and he’s so closeted he got married. This is not a guy who’s going to be running down Fifth Avenue with a rainbow flag anytime soon.”

Batt says Salvatore is pretty much in the same place he was last season. Of course, those 13 episodes were a roller coaster for Sal, who, despite being married, actively crushed on coworker/fellow artist Ken Cosgrove. Batt, however, points to the scene in which Sterling Cooper’s European up-and-comer, Kurt, shamelessly comes out to his colleagues as one of the toughest he filmed.

“There were so many emotions going on in that one scene,” he says. “There was a combination of, “Can I ever do this?” and some, “Look at the young kid who has the balls to do it.” Then, you put on the nice coat of self-loathing and you’ve got it.

“We took many takes of that scene,” he says, “and our editors are so brilliant in really picking up our performances. I owe them a lot for that, because the take I thought they should have used ended up on the cutting room floor.”