Casting To Anim BP Always Fails Why?

I have a non player controlled character BP (Snapper_001) that is hooked into an Anim Instance AnimBP_Snapper

When I attempt to cast to the Anim BP it always fails.

However this same casting principle always works when I’m casting from a player controlled character BP.

Why?

How do I successfully cast to an Anim BP that is not player controlled

Could it be, that you NEED a Controller to be able to use the AnimBlueprint?
If you have no PlayerController, then you might want to use an AI Controller for that Pawn/Character.

This also happens if possessed by a custom player controller.

While debugging the ‘Get anim instance’ node return value pin shows the correct animation blueprint reference, but the return value of the cast node returns none. Is this specific to 4.11?