Reception
Fitzgerald was nominated for the "Best Young Actor" at the 2010 Inside Soap Awards for her portrayal of Abi though lost out to Coronation Street's, Alex Bain, who plays Simon Barlow. Fitzgerald won the award for Best Dramatic Performance from a Young Actor or Actress at the 2012 British Soap Awards an award which Tony Stewart from the Daily Mirror said was "well deserved". In January 2012, Kate White of Inside Soap praised both Fitzgerald and her character, saying "In Fitzgerald, EastEnders has the brightest young star in soap. The rest of her family are getting all the juicy stuff right now, but Abi's destined for great dramatic things. Mark our words".
Stewart said, due to Max's past events with his family, what Abi might say when Max objects to her relationship with Jay, "It won't be her setting a gerbil on him", calling her a "goody-two-shoes". A writer from the Western Mail said that the Branning/Mitchell Feud makes Abi and Jay feel like "Walford's answer to Romeo and Juliet". Two writers from the Daily Mirror mocked the storyline where Abi turns down the trip to Costa Rica. One said, "An extreme case of soap agoraphobia as brilliant Abi sensibly turns down the chance to spend eight weeks in the tropical paradise of Costa Rica. But in the tiny micro-world of EastEnders, even the three-mile odyssey from Walford to the West End is considered an epic journey. So Central America is simply out of the question" with another saying, "Abi was a little girl arranging tearful funerals for her pets. But now she's a young teenager, secretly engaged to boyfriend Jay and planning to run away together. He then gives Abi an ultimatum: him or her trip to Costa Rica. Best pass her the suncream, then". However, Abi, along with the younger members of the cast were thought to be the blame of declining ratings for the show; "In the last two months, viewers have seen lots of Lauren, Lucy Beale (Hetti Bywater), Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty), Fatboy (Ricky Norwood), Ben Jay, Abi and Anthony Moon (Matt Lapinskas) - but not nearly so much of the classic characters".
Read more about this topic: Abi Branning
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)