MOSCOW — In February, Odin Biron, an American actor who plays a naïve American son of two gay fathers in the hugely popular Russian medical sitcom “Interns,” took a calculated risk. He disclosed that he was gay.

At first, there were a few tense weeks. His colleagues were shocked. His agent advised him not to talk to the tabloid media. On the show’s fan pages, some viewers wrote of their disgust or cried conspiracy theory. Mr. Biron said he was advised not to take the metro.

“That first week was very weird,” Mr. Biron said recently in an interview in a cafe here. “There was a sense of physical danger, political danger.” Shaken, he left the country until things calmed down. Then he came back.

Mr. Biron’s coming out took guts. That an actor is gay is hardly news, even in Russia. But what is rare is that he went public. In recent years, the nation’s ingrained “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture has run up against a 2013 law that criminalizes so-called gay “propaganda,” and another law against offending the sensibilities of religious believers. One of Mr. Biron’s co-stars on “Interns” — Ivan Okhlobystin, a former Russian Orthodox priest who said last year that gay people should be burned alive in ovens — called Mr. Biron “a sodomite.” He also said that Mr. Biron was crazy to come out and cause an unnecessary scandal for the show.