Have 2 player characters controlled by 1 controller

I am trying to create 2d Smash style game, In this game I want to have portals that the player can stand in and appear half on each side. My solution is to spawn a second player on the other side of the portal. My base player class is the Paper ZD character. I am struggling to get input working on the 2nd player instance. I can possess the second player character with the player controller but this looses input on the first one. All my inputs are triggered from the player controller that triggers a custom event on the player that fires the add movement input node on the player. From doing research I could possibly use an Ai controller to possess the second player character but i have no clue how to implement this to Copy the player movement. Would someone please be able to offer advice on I would do this or if there is a better way to? Thanks in advance!