When showrunner Heather Conkie went to Amber Marshall’s wedding, she brought a notebook. By year’s end, pieces of that day had found their way into Heartland.
That blur isn’t a gimmick anymore. After 19 seasons and more than 270 episodes, Amber and Amy Fleming have grown up in lockstep. Marshall, now 35, lives year-round on a ranch in Alberta — not for the brand, because that’s how she wants to live.
She works horses every day. On set, she doesn’t invent the life; she borrows from it.
“When it comes on screen I can say, I’ve been there and experienced this,” she says. “I know exactly how I handled it emotionally and can bring that into my character.”
Where the ranch meets the script
Drawn from Lauren Brooke’s books, Heartland follows the Bartlett-Fleming family across generations on an Alberta ranch. It premiered in 2007 and is Canada’s longest-running weekly TV drama; the audience has only widened.
When Season 16 landed on UP Faith & Family in the U.S., it quickly became one of the platform’s most-watched shows.
Off-camera, the cast feels like family for a reason. The twins who play Amy’s daughter Lyndy — Ruby and Emmanuella Spencer — joined at six months old. They’re nearly seven now. Marshall has watched them walk, talk, and learn to ride.
A Loss the Show Couldn’t Prepare For
Real life cut harder than any plot twist. Robert Cormier joined as Finn Cotter, set up as Amy’s first real love interest after the death of her husband, Ty Borden. Amber and Robert spent hours talking about where their characters’ story might go.
Then, in September 2022, Cormier died suddenly after a fall. He was just 33.
Production paused. For viewers, Finn’s arc stopped almost as it started. For Marshall, the work got heavier: she still had to play grief on camera, day after day, while the cast and crew absorbed a sudden hole in their own lives — a reminder, she has said, of how little warning life gives.
Season 16: room to breathe
Season 16 finally lets Amy look forward. For the first time since Ty’s death, she’s allowed to want happiness again. Marshall won’t say whether Amy ends up with newcomer Sam Langstone (Shawn Roberts).
She does tell a quieter story: a friend who lost her husband and, years later, found love again with a neighbor. Grief doesn’t vanish, she suggests — it thins enough for new people to walk through.
Ask how long she’ll stay with Heartland, and she doesn’t hedge: as long as the show keeps going.
Fans keep telling her the same thing — grandparents and grandkids can sit through an episode in the same room. Nearly twenty years of that is rare. Amber Marshall’s still living it on both sides of the camera.
