Levy and his father, the comedian Eugene Levy, created and star in Schitt’s Creek, which is set to end its fifth and current season in early April. (The show found a wider audience after landing on Netflix, but airs Wednesdays in the U.S. on the channel Pop.) The series follows the formerly wealthy Rose family—the video magnate Johnny (Eugene Levy); his wife, Moira; and their two adult children, David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy). After an errant business manager pilfers their fortune, the four retreat to the impishly named Canadian town that Johnny had purchased for David as a joke in 1991. It’s the only asset the government allows the Roses to keep, so Johnny’s prank becomes the family’s salvation.

But while Johnny, David, and Alexis have built new lives over the show’s five seasons, Moira resists the possibility of staying in Schitt’s Creek for good. Despite winning a seat on the town council and performing in the local a cappella group, she views the family’s current predicament as a temporary one. “Our futures lie outside this town,” she tells her husband in a recent episode. “It feels these days like I’m the only one who hasn’t veered off course.” Her hilarious peacocking through garb and gab, therefore, functions as a means of self-preservation—a reminder of who she feels she really is.

The costume designer Debra Hanson dresses Moira in high-end monochromatic fashion, including pieces from Alexander McQueen and Isabel Marant. But rather than signaling cosmopolitanism, the outfits border on comical. Whether wearing a Shakespearean collar that calls to mind a dilophosaurus’s cowl, or a waist-length brunette wig reminiscent of 1970s-era Cher, Moira uses her appearance to make a statement. Her attire is a way of distinguishing herself from the “little townie friends,” in her words, that the family has made. Speaking with The New Yorker, O’Hara explained, “[Moira’s wardrobe is] strong and it’s armor, which is perfect when you’ve had your life ripped out from under you … and you’re in this place that’s like the town you got out of earlier in life.”

Moira’s diction, like her sartorial aesthetic, is yet another accoutrement. The Rose matriarch flaunts her words as if they were three-carat diamonds. When her husband makes the mistake of calling himself hip, she chastises, “In our children’s eyes, we are the polar antonym of hip.” When a local vintner asks her to be in a commercial promoting his fruit wine, she confesses, “His turns of phrase leave much to be desired, but the wine is potable.”

Moira’s verbal posturing is all the more hilarious given her professional background. The show takes great joy in revealing the family’s former life in quick asides that highlight the disparity between their past and present. (Alexis’s fraught international escapades are one such example.) Moira not only played a leading role on the popular fictional soap opera Sunrise Bay, but she also had renowned stints performing as Lady Macbeth during a “Shakespeare at Sea” week on a cruise, and hosting “the nontelevised portion of the People’s Choice Awards.” There’s an aspirational sense to her fabulousness, as if it were a mask she’s afraid to let slip.