multiple animators

we have 2 playable characters in our local multiplayer, in our player script we let the players choose between the two and give the characters an ID that lets each character do their own thing.

my problem is that we have 2 animators with the different animations for the two characters and you can not put more than one animator component onto a prefab.

is there any way that I can make other scripts with the two different animators and then reference them in the player script to have both animations playing?

example of our code:

public RuntimeAnimatorController character1Animator, character2Animator;

public Animator animator;

void start()
{

if(player ID = 1)
{
//here I want to use only one of the animators, but how do I make only one specific animator active during the entire game after player select?
}

}

Have you tried animator.runtimeAnimatorController = …?