Just to alert any new people who might be having the same problem I did.
If you have the character you’re trying to animate on the scene and you’re having a problem that the pawn is not being recognized on the animationBP (even if you correctly set it on the characterBP mesh), try to just delete the character from the scene and place it there again.
(I don’t know how this is even a problem, and I’m only posting this because I had to search for hours to finally find an answer)
Hope this helps somebody out there.