Broadway Vet Bryan Batt Will Not Return to TV's Mad Men

Bryan Batt, the Broadway vet who made a splash on the Emmy-winning Mad Men as art director Salvatore Romano, won’t be returning to the hit show, according to TV Guide.

“I was supposed to be notified by December 31,” Batt told the magazine, “and nothing.” Sal was fired by Don Draper (played by heartthrob Jon Hamm) after resisting a male client’s advances on the October 11, 2009 episode, but the character’s future was left uncertain. Shooting for the show’s fourth season begins in March.

“We don’t murder people on our show, but for there to be any stakes, there have to be consequences,” Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner said about the loss of Batt. “I know how people felt about Bryan. I obviously love working with him, and he has been an indelible character since the pilot. But I felt it was an expression of the times that he couldn’t work there anymore. It’s the ultimate case of sexual harassment.”

Batt’s Broadway credits include understudying Albin in the 2004 revival of La Cage aux Folles, Saturday Night Fever, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sunset Boulevard, Beauty and the Beast, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Starlight Express and Cats. Off-Broadway, he gave a memorable performance in Jeffrey and appeared in several versions of Forbidden Broadway.

So will Batt’s next move be a return to the Great White Way? “From your mouth to the producers’ ears,” Batt told Broadway.com in October. “There’s nothing like Broadway.”