Nana Moon

Nana Moon

Victoria Alice Moon (née Montgomery) is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Hilda Braid. She was more commonly known in the serial and to viewers as Nana Moon. In a special episode, Kate Colgrave Pope played her as a 24-year-old in a flashback episode from 1944. She was introduced alongside her grandsons, Alfie (Shane Richie) and Spencer Moon (Chris Parker), and made her first appearance on 3 December 2002. She was introduced by executive producer Louise Berridge in 2002, and a decision was made to kill off the character in 2005 following the announced departures of her on-screen family, and made her last appearance on 16 December 2005.

Braid appeared in over 200 episodes as Nana Moon. Her storylines included meeting Wilfred Atkins (Dudley Sutton), a fraudster who wanted to con her out of her possessions and fulfilling a list of things she wanted to do before she died. During later storylines, Nana's health began to fail and she developed dementia. Nancy Banks-Smith from The Guardian criticised the portrayal of dementia, but praised Braid's performance. Dek Hogan from Digital Spy said the dementia scenes were "a welcome change."

One of Nana's final storylines saw her visit Normandy with Alfie to see her late husband's grave. The episode featured a two-minute silence, flashbacks to Nana's backstory, and a guest appearance from the actor Trevor Peacock, who played Sid, a war veteran. The episode won "Best Single Episode" at the British Soap Awards in 2006. Braid's final scenes saw her character killed off, after dying of aortic aneurysm. The decision to kill off Nana was criticised by fans and critics, who did not see why she had to be written out of the series, just because Richie had announced his departure.