Trey Kennedy Describes His Viral Post on “Basic White Girls” (Exclusive)

Trey Kennedy was just a teenager when he started creating content for social media, but his charisma and humor have carried him over a decade into the future and its exciting new ways to go viral.

While speaking to PEOPLE about his new wine brand, Basic Cellars, Kennedy looked back on his career, which began with producing singing videos on the now-defunct video-sharing platform Vine. His starting point is the same as many other successful creators, such as Shawn Mendes.

In fact, Kennedy says that during his Vine days, he collaborated with the Grammy nominee on “six-second covers,” as they were called in reference to the time limits on shared videos.

“It was like, ‘What’s going on, man? What are you singing today?'” Kennedy recalls of his interactions with Mendes. “We haven’t remained good friends over the last 12 years, but I’m glad he’s doing well.”

While singing online “worked better” for Mendes, Kennedy notes, comedy videos became a better outlet for the now 32-year-old creator, keeping people laughing online even after Vine closed in 2017. “I just kept following him,” he says.

However, not every Viner experienced further success after the app collapsed. Some of Kennedy's digital contemporaries “fizzled out,” he notes.

“I can’t really figure out what it is,” he says of those who haven’t found a new audience. “But the few that are from those Vine days, I think we attribute it to a change…You really have to be open-minded.”

Even as Kennedy reflected on his own transition from singing clips to comedy videos, he realized early on that “you can't be proud enough to beat your head against the wall to achieve a vision,” he shares. “You really have to listen to what people want.”

This philosophy has earned Kennedy an Instagram following of 3 million, and the term “followers” really seems to fit his career and life. His fans have seen him become a husband and then a father of two children. He shares son Thomas, 20 months, and daughter Eva, 1 month, with his wife Katie, whom he married in 2020.

Throughout the groundbreaking changes in his life, Kennedy has retained some of his favorite aspects, such as his famous impression of a typical mother: lovingly critical of her children, happy to chat (loudly) on the phone with friends, and not so tech-savvy, but still eager. However, since becoming a father, he has also developed some new tricks for a newer audience And Its original adult viewers might find both just as hilarious.

“A few of the comments I made [are] speak to it. I did it a little bit when you catch yourself saying your dad's lines or something. “It’s a hair’s worth of a freckle away” or something, it just comes out of me,” he tells PEOPLE.

And it's part of the fun, or in Kennedy's words, it's part of the “humbling process of being a comedian and having these hot takes over the years.”

“I often joked on stage about it: 'Parenting isn't so bad, is it?' “Before I became a mother, I can't believe anyone stayed in their seats,” says the social media star. “You just live life and kind of reveal, 'Okay, maybe I don't agree with the part I learned anymore.'”

He continues: “But that’s part of the journey. A lot of things you have to poke your hole in the ground and it might turn out to be wrong, but as long as it's funny it's fine.”

One thing that always seems to stick with his audience? Kennedy's comic references to wine. He's gone viral with videos about “the five stages of wine night” and what it's like to hear his wife review a “wine night.” Over time, Kennedy says, he enjoyed wine with the same enthusiasm as his characters, and he drew on that inspiration to create Basic Cellars.

“I love drinking wine and being the audience I go to shows, I get tagged in stories. For example, 'We're on the way to the Trey show' and they're drinking wine,” he says, noting that he's always inclined to make jokes about women and their “most basic” tendencies.

“Simple white girls are kind of my thing. I say that without shame,” he says. “I grew up with that. I grew up with a sister and a large group of cousins. They are all in sororities. And it was great to see my career grow from that core audience.”

The viral sensation states that his career blossomed beyond the female demographic because women began bringing their male partners to his comedy shows. “The guys show up and say, 'Hey, I kind of like this guy too.' This whole idea of ​​being simple, I just realized that my fan base is drawn to that.”

But “basic” has another meaning when it comes to Kennedy’s new line of wines. He wanted to decode the product and make it serve consumers' simplest needs: good taste and branding that “screams, 'This is just a good time,'” he explains.

“At the wine store…they start bombarding me with questions like, ‘What do you pair this with? And what is it for?' “I don’t know how to answer that,” he jokes. “It's just a good wine…It doesn't have all this fancy cursive or this and that. It should just be uncomplicated.”

With the single-serve bottles and current varieties, a Californian Pinot Noir and an Italian white wine, the comedian addresses the wine lovers he knows best: his audience.

“You share it with your friends. If you want a glass on its own, drink it from the bottle and pour it into a Styrofoam cup,” says Kennedy. “Hopefully it just fits in with what I’m already doing, which is bringing people together through my content, through my shows, through everything else and now hopefully sharing some wine.”