Sometimes the most dangerous threats are the ones you invite in.

That’s the unsettling premise of Amazon Prime Video’s new psychological thriller series Malice, which is now streaming. David Duchovny plays a self-satisfied venture capitalist whose family, including wife Nat (Carice van Houten), has their glamorous lives upended by a charismatic yet increasingly sinister tutor, played by Jack Whitehall.

“If I were to put it into a term, it’s 'this guy is very certain,'” Duchovny tells Yahoo of his character, Jamie Tanner. “He's got certainty. And as his certainty cracks, you start to see his humanity. But before that, he's just kind of a machine.”

The six-part bingeable show marks a return to TV for the X-Files and Californication star. Malice plays like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle — with a British, porn-obsessed "manny" whose true motive is concealed until the end — colliding with a glossy yet dysfunctional family straight out of The White Lotus.

The story’s tension — which centers on letting a stranger into the family circle — echoes something Duchovny has grappled with in his own life.

“My children [West and Kyd] are grown now, but both their mom [ex-wife Téa Leoni] and me were working a lot when the kids were little, so we always had help,” he says. “We were lucky to have found really great people. We had a manny at one point too. The only really bad experience I've had with caregiving was with my mother when she had dementia for the last six, seven, eight years of her life. We had a caregiver who turned out to be not a trustworthy person.”

That experience helped Duchovny relate to the “very intimate dynamic” between his character and Whitehall’s villain.

“You invite somebody into your family that you don't know that well,” he says. “You're just trusting that their motives are pure. You can get burned. Obviously, people get burned. And it can go either with taking care of young children or taking care of the elderly, the most vulnerable stages that we have as people.”

The show unfolds as an edge-of-your-seat thriller that escalates as misfortune befalls the family and those closest to them. Disturbing surprises, like luggage filled with feces, show up at the family’s door.

The mounting chaos stands in contrast to the show’s opening, which introduces the family’s lavish lifestyle amid the sun-drenched luxury of their Greek villa. Duchovny’s character is introduced with a cheeky bare-bottom scene. Being nude on camera at 65 in this was both business as usual for the actor and a yikes moment, he says.

“We shot that scene in Greece after shooting for almost two months in London,” Duchovny says. “By then, Carice and I were friends, and it was easy to do. But then I realized: That's the introduction of my character. It was really when I watched the show. Then I was [like], ‘Yikes,’ because it's not really how the show plays out.”

Sex scenes take a backseat to the tutor’s diabolical scheming.

“I don't know if it's a spoiler or a promise that you want me to make, but you're not going to see that again,” Duchovny says of his bottom. “So it's a bit of a misdirect that the show is going to be about one thing [but it actually goes another way]. And, my ass is the misdirect,” he laughs.

Even though Malice is intense, Duchovny weaves in some of his signature humor just as he did with Fox Mulder and Hank Moody.

“That's life, really,” he says. “Life is suspense with lighter moments. You can bring humanity into these situations by showing humor. It's always important for me as an actor to find the flip side of whatever it is I'm doing.”

With so many years in the business, Duchovny says finding a good project like this gives him dueling feelings. The actor, newly married to Monique Pendleberry, gets excited but also knows his life is going to be uprooted. He also wonders if he’s up for the task.

“It's always just this surprise that you get when you're reading [a good script] — like a tingle," he says. "But it's always tinged with dread, because I'm like, ‘I'm gonna have to do this. I gotta go to work.’ As much as I love it, it also upends everything. It's a weird life we have as actors, moving along and then everything goes into this one place for a while.”

He continues, “When I'm reading something that's well-written … it's really a combination of great excitement and great dread too. Because when something is good, it's also going to be a challenge. And as much as I love challenges, there's always that part of you asking: ‘Am I up to it? Can I do it?’”

For Duchovny, all of his projects — whether it’s acting, writing his new poetry book, About Time: Poems, or hosting his podcast, Fail Better — come “from curiosity,” he says. “They’re all different expressions of that.”

Each medium challenges him in unique ways and offers opportunities to learn, grow and be surprised. That’s especially true with the podcast.

“I think I've gotten better at it because I've gotten more relaxed,” he says. “In the beginning, I wanted to get to a certain thing. … But I realized … the best stuff that you get is going to be surprising. [It’s something that] just happened in the moment. The best stuff … happens by mistake.”