No, you should keep your player start, as long as the good player blueprint is spawned.
When you are in PIE, simply go to your anim BP, and instead of preview, you should be able to select the one from your unit . To get your mouse control back without ending the simulation ( world should still play ) , you can do shift+F1
if ever you still don’t have the choice of the AnimationBlueprint instead of “preview instance”, there might be a wrong setting on your unit blueprint. Choice should display something like " SCharacter_AnimBP_C_0 in yourUnitBP"