Stephen Colbert, Daft Punk & MTV VMAs [VIDEO]: Comedian Breaks Character to Explain Month-Long Headache for 'Report Episode That Never Happened

In a recent interview on a podcast hosted by Paul Mercurio, Comedy Central television personality Stephen Colbert opened up about the month leading up to Daft Punk's scheduled performance on his show "The Colbert Report." This podcast interview revealed that Colbert and his writing team had to work around the fact that Daft Punk refused to speak or perform on the show. We all know how it ended up, but this candid interview reveals that the build up was even worse than the outcome.

"They said, 'Do you want to cancel?' I said, 'No, this is an interesting challenge,'" Colbert explained. The comedian originally intended to perform a six-minute monologue with the electronica duo nodding alongside him, in their helmets. Considering the talent refused to talk, Colbert was hoping to get their manager involved in order to at least talk to someone.

"I wish we could have done this joke. It was: 'Paul [Hahn, their manager], can I ask you -- how do I even know it's them in the robot outfits, how do I even know it's them?' And he goes, 'Stephen, if it wasn't really them, they'd be doing the song,'" Colbert said.

As most of us know, Colbert showed a star-studded video montage of celebrities dancing to the Daft Punk song "Get Lucky." Though they ended up using the video anyway, it was originally made as a part of the gag to "convince" the duo to perform the song on "The Colbert Report."

This made them uncomfortable however, forcing Stephen and his team to scrap the idea in order to work around the group's restrictions. But then the whole situation with the MTV Video Music Awards secret performance happened and the rest is history.

"Ultimately, I would say, I understand that the VMAs have got their own rules, and Daft Punk, that's a big important thing to have done," Colbert said, "but I'm the guy who's completely screwed here. I don't have a show tonight."

Listen to Stephen on Mercurio's podcast right here: