DON’T BE HATING: Toronto photographer isn’t Amber Heard’s sister

Article content

Have you heard?

Article content

Toronto photographer Whitney Heard is getting lots of unpleasant Instagram messages, e-mails and phone calls from people who mistakenly think she’s the sister of Amber Heard, the latter currently embroiled in a nasty defamation trial with ex-husband Johnny Depp.

Whitney (Heard) Fernandez recently took the stand in the courtroom battle in her sister’s defence but Toronto’s Heard – who hasn’t been paying attention to the contentious proceedings – has just one message: “Don’t be hatin’ haters.”

“For a very long time I had the same name,” said Heard, the founder of the Queen’s Quay-based Summerset Studio (summersetstudio.ca), down the line from Manarola, in La Spezia, Italy, in between wedding photo shoots.

Article content

“I started receiving messages about three weeks ago I guess that were kind of strange and weird and then I realized pretty quickly, that they were related to the trial. Now it’s kind of non-stop. There’s been a few positive messages but most of them are very negative. They’re under the impression that I’m related to Amber but I’m not.”

It actually all started in 2017 back when the response was positive.

“I used to receive fan mail,” said Heard, whose Instagram handle is @WhitneyHeard.

“(People) would be trying to send her fan mail. For quite a while, usually like once a month, I’d have some funny thing happen.”

Both Whitney Heards actually connected on Instagram and were going to get together for a photo shoot as in “Whitney Heard by Whitney Heard,” which never happened.

Article content

“We just touched base on the fact that we had the same name and that we just thought that was funny,” said Heard. “And that sometimes I get fan mail and she joked, ‘Well, if I ever get any photography inquiries, I’ll let you know.’”

Heard said she reached out to Amber’s real sister again in light of the trial “but she actually wasn’t getting as much hate mail at the start. I think more people were being directed to my account. And then they’d start to figure it out.”

The one upside is that some people are discovering Heard’s photo business which she started in 2013.

“I did have a couple people reach out and go, ‘Oh, actually I looked you up because I thought you were Amber’s sister and then I realized you weren’t and now I’m just following along because I like your work,’” said Heard.