How to talk to GetOwner methods if not an AActor (i'm doing something daft)

I hope someone can help me - Im in a frightful muddle

I would like to talk to the base class here from one of the c++ components in the blueprint

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it without dynamically casting to my base class

For example - I want to check if the object is gripped from a referenced C++component - there is a **isGripper **bool in the base class but how do I reach it from for example “Colony_Unit_C”?

Similarly - when I get an overlapping actor event (for the same object) - I would like to use its base class methods to check things…- but as it comes in as an actor I have to cast it to the base class to expose the methods

Now this dynamic casting works fine in c++ - but the c++ code crashes the blueprint!!! I simply cant open the blueprint while that code is active

Any hints I am sure I am doing this wrong