On the ninth episode of Mad Men's third season, Don Draper fired Salvatore Romano by request of a major client who threatened to take his business elsewhere (and whose advances had been rejected by the closeted art director just the night before). That was the last time actor Bryan Batt appeared on the series, leaving many to wonder: "What happened to Sal?" Unfortunately, when Mad Men takes its final bow this Sunday, audiences won't have an answer. So we decided to give Sal the sendoff he deserves. In this Esquire.com exclusive told to senior writer Matt Patches, Batt reflects on the character, his career, and the experience of playing a pivotal role in a bona fide classic.

In 1995, I had the good fortune of creating a role onstage in the New York production of Paul Rudnick's sex comedy Jeffrey. When they made the film, I got to keep my role and appear alongside Sigourney Weaver, Olympia Dukakis, Nathan Lane, and Patrick Stewart. And, when the film arrived in theaters, I was stepping into the leading male role of Broadway's Sunset Boulevard. It was unimaginable and thrilling. A friend of mine told me, "Enjoy this—it doesn't always happen like this."

Not always, but it wouldn't be the last time. If there's another high that comes close, it was Mad Men. The minute we started Matthew Weiner's tale of life, love, and advertising, I sat back and just enjoyed it. No projecting, no worrying, no bitterness—only enjoyment. And there was so much to enjoy.

Mad Men was built on camaraderie. When I filmed my first meaty scene in season one, where Paul Keeley's Belle Jolie salesman attempts to cajole my character, Salvatore Romano, into going to his hotel room, to be honest, I was a little bit nervous... up until that episode my role sort of consisted of a quip here and an arch look there. On that shoot, Aaron Staton, Vinnie Kartheiser, Rich Sommer, and Michael Gladis all showed up on set for moral support. And then Janie Bryant, the costume designer, who I bonded with over a love for New Orleans, outfitted me in a vest with a little embroidered fleur-de-lis on it. Afterward, Matt called to tell me he thought the scene was fantastic. People don't need to do stuff like that.

They did on this show.

Rich Sommer (Harry Crane), Aaron Staton (Ken Cosgrove), Michael Gladis (Paul Kinsey), Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell), and Bryan Batt (Sal Romano)

That I even auditioned to play Mad Men's first art director took luck. In 2004, I was acting regularly in New York's theater scene. But a smart actor always has a second interest, an off-hours job. For years Tom, my partner of 26 years (now husband), and I always had dreamt that one day we'd open a home furnishings shop in my hometown of New Orleans. When funding for a show I was set to appear in fell through, we decided the time was right. There was a proposed business plan and life picked the date. We'd finally open the store.

Everything fell into place. I was splitting my time between New York and New Orleans, going back and forth for shows. And then Katrina happened. As the storm barreled towards New Orleans, we were vacationing in Sonoma and couldn't get back in time. My mother was scheduled to fly out soon after the storm. She couldn't get out. I panicked. Luckily, my goddaughter was still in town. She took the car and my mother, boarded up our house, raised everything up in case water came in, and did the same thing to the store. She saved everything.

Tom and I decided to thank her. So we decided to dig into savings, and take her to Paris. A week before we were set to leave, my agent called. "There's this audition for this TV show and they really want to see you," he said. "It's called Mad Men and you'd play an art director in 1960." I never got television auditions, but I couldn't cancel this trip. I pushed for another audition time. Not an option. So I let it go, the first time in my memory when I chose life over show business.

I returned home from Paris to rehearse an Off-Broadway play and received another call from my agent. "You know," he went on, "they never found who they wanted for Mad Men." So I put on a little ascot and a blazer and went into the audition for Matthew Weiner and director Alan Taylor on my lunch break. And I got it... in one audition. That does not happen. With networks, you jump through hoops. But Matt had a clear vision and the people paying the bills let him realize it.

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Matt and I didn't have many long discussions about Sal. We'd chat on set, at events or parties, or maybe at a table read where he'd give a few notes. Matt knows how to talk to actors, how to get very specific. He had to be to make the show he wanted. On set there was no time. Someone once told me that every take cost $10,000. Not an exact figure, but Mad Men was expensive. The actors had to be prepared and go, go, go.

Luckily, Matt knew what he wanted. At my makeup and wardrobe test, he came over and said, "You know what's going to happen to Sal?" I said, "What?" Keep in mind, this was before we filmed the pilot. "Later on, I don't know when, but he's going to go on a business trip with Don and Don's going to bag a stewardess. And Sal's going to go on the trip too. He's going to have sex with some guy and Don's going to find out—but it's not going to matter." I said, "That's cool." I hadn't even read the whole script yet. I had just been cast. All I knew was: This was television! I was going to bring Matt's image of Sal to life.

The first season was so magical. We filmed the pilot in New York in 2006. We had to wait the entire year because Matt was still working on The Sopranos. I remember Matt inviting me and other cast members to a screening. It blew me away. The pilot ends with "On the Street Where You Live" from My Fair Lady playing behind Don and his family. Matt told me that the music cue was for me—a Broadway reference. Oh God, I couldn't say thank you enough. Once we saw the pilot, I realized that they were never going to let us look bad, never going to have a bad shot. All the attention to detail, all the attention to script and storytelling, was so well-crafted that it was like doing a trapeze act while the filmmakers held the net for you. They're not going to let you fall and hurt yourself. My only thought was, "Oh God, I hope people see this because it's AMC." Because who was going to watch AMC?

Mad Men's casting breakdown made two points about Sal: He was the artistic director of Sterling Cooper and, to a modern audience, it was clear that he was gay, but not to the world of 1960. That felt universal. I think everyone in their lives, in some way, shape, or form, pretends to fit in. Being a gay man, I knew what that was like. I was able to channel that, adding in bits of research from the period. Gay activists and many others would be pleased to know that Matt was adamant about having a gay man play this part. That never came up during the audition—I'd like to think I wasn't cast because I was gay—but it was nice to hear those words. You don't hear that often in this business.

I'm an open book. I've performed many roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway where I had to play straight—it's called acting! I tend to over-gesture, perhaps it's the French in me, so for TV, everything had to be dialed down to make each moment a little flare of a cigarette, a glint in the eye. It had to be very stylized and very subtle. Notes on set helped. I'll never forget one of the boardroom scenes (one of the many, many boardroom scenes). We were shooting into the night, picking up each person's dialogue from every possible angle. After one early take, the director came to me with a note: "Bryan, that was great... but could you do it less gay?" I said, "Of course!" For a womanizing ad exec, the arch in the voice, the eyebrows, and the cigarette, dangling off the tips of the fingers, had to go.

Batt says this still from season two is how Ill always remember Sal.

When I learned that Matt was writing Sal off the show, I was in New Orleans caring for my mother, who was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. Every time I wasn't filming I would come back. Matt wanted to explain in person, but since I was out of town, I asked to bite the bullet over the phone. He explained that this was the course for the character, but that I shouldn't worry: Sal would come back. He kept saying that, a few times at awards shows after we finished shooting, which was quite interesting. I knew how much Matt loved all of his characters and the actors he cast in them, and how difficult it must have been to do the inevitable.

This is me projecting, but I think that the sendoff was so strong and so upsetting, that Sal's firing was so unfair, but so true to what would happen at that time, and what did happen and will continue sometimes to happen, that bringing Sal back wouldn't have been as strong. Matt wouldn't do anything that isn't the best. I don't think the writers knew that people were that attached to him. But after my final episode, there was a big write-in outcry. A few years ago, I bumped into Elisabeth Moss at Bar Centrale, a wonderful Broadway watering hole. She said, "If one more person comes up to me and asks me what's going on with Sal, I'm going to scream."

Matt mentioned along the way that Sal could come back as a big director, but I think the storyline took a different route. Matt is not one of these people who would let the public tell him what story to tell. The show is a success because no one pandered to the opinions of anyone else but the storyteller himself. Yes, there were occasional rumblings from AMC or Lionsgate, the company producing the show. Someone complained about a moment in season three where a bellhop slips his hand down my pants. Matt basically said, "Wait a minute, you show people's heads getting blown off in movies on AMC. It's just a hand going down the pants!" They were thinking there was going to be more, because the hand goes down the pants and then the alarm goes off. Matt won and the scene stayed put.

My last scene wasn't the firing. It was an incidental, that brief moment in the office where I pass Harry Crane after Roger Sterling fires me the first time. I only found out what would happen in that episode when I got the script, maybe a week before. No one told me in advance. The staff was very closed-mouthed about the story—in a good way. But after my last scene, Rich Sommer, who played Harry, and I went out for drinks afterwards. It was an odd thing because, when someone is wrapped for the season, there's a big to-do. If someone leaves the show, everyone goes out and parties. But no one knew if I was coming back. So there was no big sendoff. Just drinks with Rich. We reminisced, hoped, and schemed about how Sal would return.

On the night my last episode aired, Sal wasn't even on my mind. That was the night of Christina Hendricks' wedding. A beautiful wedding. The most gorgeous glowing bride. Sal wasn't even on my mind.

I'm grateful for the three years I had on Mad Men. It changed my life, and I've had so many crazy things happen to me. Once I was at the SAG Awards and in between and across the room was Jane Krakowski—we did our first Broadway show together, Starlight Express, years ago. Went over, hugged. "Love your show." "Love your show." "It's been too long. Let's get together." Blah-blah-blah. They're yelling "Get back to your seats!" over the speakers. As I rushed back to my seat, someone at another table stood up abruptly, propelling me into Meryl Streep. I almost knocked her down. She looked back at me and she said, "I love Mad Men! My husband and I watch it every Sunday." I thought, "I can die now. Meryl Streep has seen my work."

Sure, I would have liked some closure, a few more episodes to say goodbye to Sal. Though an open-ended thread has its perks. People can decide for themselves what they want to happen to Sal. And it's bittersweet for me, professionally. When Michael returned for his Hare Krishna moment I asked him what it was like. He told me, "Don't do it." I guess it was kind of like living the last act of Our Town or having sex with an ex. You know it's going to be great for that one time, but then it's over. You know it's over, and you can never go back.

I've thought about where Sal wound up. On Mad Men, what you think is going to happen doesn't happen, but what does happen is wonderful in a sad way. It's never really a happy ending. But I'd like to think that Sal had a happy ending, that he does realize who he is and moves on. Unfortunately he'd have to break little Kitty's heart, but I think she had the clues by the end of the third season. I think his mother dies too. His Italian mother dies and it was an impetus to go, "You know what? I'm pretending for you, for all these other people. I'm going to be who I am." I imagine him walking through the West Village as Stonewall happens and getting swept up in it.

People identified with Sal. Both gay and straight. It really touched on a nerve, that people hadn't really considered in a long time. While I was on the show, a girl came up to me and said, "The first season I thought my dad was Don Draper, but then I realized later on my dad was Salvatore Romano." Sal had a basis in reality, thanks to advisers and writers on the show. Those stories were real things that happened to real people.

It was just so much fun to be on a hit—a critically acclaimed hit. Once I was at the grocery store when this guy piped up at the checkout. "That show on TV, man!" he said. "That show on TV!"

"The best show on TV!"

Yes, that show. It doesn't always happen like that.

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Bryan Batt is a 25-year veteran of the stage. After Mad Men, he appeared in such films as Funny People, 12 Years a Slave, and The Last of Robin Hood. He's also the author of two books, Big Easy Style and She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother. He's currently shooting MTV's Scream in Baton Rogue.

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