It’s a bustling morning at Raleigh Studios. Anupam Tripathi and his castmates are switching between interviews and photoshoots, going from room to room. In the midst of a packed schedule, the Squid Game actor found time to sneak away for a quick phone call with his mother. “I get these blessings to keep it grounded, to not fly too high,” he tells Tudum. It hasn’t even been a full year since Squid Game premiered, and the Indian actor still can’t believe how much viewers have connected with his character Ali Abdul. “I never imagined people would talk about my character,” he says. “There were so many great actors — everybody’s a huge star in South Korea. They have their craft, and I was learning from them.”

In the series, Ali is a Pakistani migrant worker whose employer hasn’t paid him in six months. Struggling to support...