It is killing comedian Stephen Colbert to not be on TV while Donald Trump is handing him loads of material. 

Colbert met with the TV writers in Beverly Hills saying, “I want to do jokes on Donald Trump so badly,” He said “But I have no venue. So now I’m just dry-Trumping.

“I just pray he will still be in the race on Sept. 8, that he doesn’t do anything dangerous like ride motorcycles. I light a candle for him every night – and I hope it doesn’t get near his hair.”

Beyond this pent-up Trump frustration, Colbert said, he’s mostly feeling “anxiety” as he prepares to take over the 11:35 p.m. slot that David Letterman held for 22 years.

“If you’re not a little anxious, you’re not taking it seriously enough,” Colbert said. “But my main anxiety is to perform again, to get in front of an audience. I hate comedy in theory.”

Once he’s done the Trump jokes, he said, he expects the biggest reward from his new gig is that “it will free me to be myself.”

He couldn’t do that, he admitted, on “The Colbert Report,” the Comedy Central show that made him famous.

“I was playing a character,” he said. “So when I did interviews, I always had to filter my responses through the maze in my head of how my character would react – and do it fast enough so the audience didn’t know I was doing it.

“Whenever I finished an interview, I was exhausted. I’ve been doing interviews as myself now, and the first time it was hard. But ever since then, I’ve noticed I’m not tired any more.”

H/T NY Daily News