APawn BP With Skeletal Mesh Fails To Load

When I have a class derived from ASkeletalMeshActor I am able to assign and view an animation in the BP editor, and I am able load it at runtime using FStreamableManager::SimplyAsyncLoad(). However, I am not able to assign an AIController derived class to it.

If I change my base class to APawn, and assign a SkeletalMesh Component in the BP editor, I am able to assign an AIController derived class to it. But I cannot load it at runtime. What am I doing wrong?

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you.