What's the best way to control another skeletal mesh with input while controlling my first person character?

Hi there. I’m making a first person adventure game. I’m trying to make an interact method where the character can pick up an item and ‘inspect’ it.
I’ve got all that set up but I want to have the character hold the item and have the player manipulate the hand rotation and movement with the mouse/joypad axis.

I’ve got my hand and arm mesh, fully rigged and everything. What’s the best way to go about controlling this hand mesh with the axis input? I’ll obviously need to manipulate the bones directly somehow. Can I just sort of say ‘stop controlling the character movement and control this hand mesh instead’

Thanks for any help!