'The Royals' Jasper & Eleanor — Actor Tom Austen T

E!'s fictional hit series The Royals has us up in arms over last week's episode where Princess Eleanor's bodyguard-turned-slampiece Jasper slept with her mother, Queen Helena. It was a power play, an attempt to avoid blackmail, but arguably still totally inexcusable. Can the on-again-off-again couple recover from the royal rendezvous?

Actor Tom Austen, who plays the brooding bodyguard, weighs in: "All I can say is that there is a huge twist in the season coming up very soon and everything changes from there on in," he says. "All of the characters have to adapt and change to the enormity of the situation at hand, and the way Jasper and Eleanor deal with it together is really interesting and tells you a lot about how both of them really feel," he admits. Adding: "OK STOP! Im not telling you anything else."

But we did get a few more salacious morsels out of the British actor. When I asked him if he received mountains of hate mail from Jasper/Eleanor shippers after his character slept with the Queen, he gave a resounding, "Yep!" Adding: "The response me and Al have had from fans is huge. We are so proud of it because we both put so much into these characters, and really properly, genuinely care about them being good together."

"It really seems like everyone cares as much as we do," he says. "But of course the flip side of it is that anytime either one of the characters does something really, truly bad to one another, people get upset. And I'm sorry to say if the last episode upset you... I wouldn't put the Kleenex away just yet."

Well, damn. Catch new episodes of The Royals Sunday nights on E!

Image: E!