Found the answer to that here: https://panel.holoviz.org/reference/widgets/Player.html
Effectively, you just need to create the widget you want to use in interact manually:
@pn.interact(ts=pn.widgets.Player(name='Player', start=-100, end=-1, value=-100, loop_policy='loop'))
def plot_ts(ts):
return plot_holoviews(lgm_mesh, lgm_awiesm2p1_fesom_temp_50m_ds.isel(time=ts))
That results in something you can scrub through with the player widget which has play, pause, speed up, look controls, etc.