you’re posessing one pawn at a time. this posessed pawn gets your input. i would try to put your input logics in the player controller (it gets your inputs which are not handled by a posessed pawn), and from this posess eg the vr and do your regular inputs, and from the PC get a ref to the sidescrollerCharBP and call the relevant actions on it.
sound like having some brainfart today, but I guess you get what I mean 