four months privately rehearsing with music and dance coaches. She read the works of Christopher Isherwood, whose novel Goodbye to Berlin inspired the musical, and visited Berlin to research Isherwood's life and inspirations. Her performance received mixed reviews; Jesse Green of Vulture praised her singing and commitment to the role, while Newsdays Linda Winer thought her portrayal lacked depth. The rigorousness of the assignment led Williams to consider Cabaret her toughest project. Challenged by her work on Cabaret, Williams was eager to continue working on the stage. She found a part in a 2016 revival of the David Harrower play Blackbird. Set entirely in the lunchroom of an office, it focuses on a young woman (Williams), who confronts a much older man (played by Jeff Daniels) for having intercourse with her when she was twelve years old. Williams, who had not seen previous stagings of the play, was drawn to the ambiguity of her character and found herself unable to distance from it after each performance. Hilton Als of The New Yorker considered her "daring and nonjudgmental embodiment of her not easily assimilable character" to be the production's highlight. She received a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play nomination for Blackbird. Williams returned to film in 2016 with supporting roles in two small-scale dramas, Certain Women and Manchester by the Sea. The former marked her third collaboration with Kelly Reichardt and told three interconnected narratives based on the short stories of Maile Meloy. As with their previous collaborations, the film featured minimal dialogue and required Williams to act through silences. Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea starred Casey Affleck as Lee, a depressed man who separates from his wife, Randy (Williams), following the tragic death of their children. Williams agreed to the project to work with Lonergan, whose work she admired, and in preparation, she visited Manchester to interview local mothers about their lives. She also worked with a dialect coach to speak in a Massachusetts accent. Despite the film's bleakness, she found a connection with her character's desire to reclaim her life in the face of tragedy. Several critics hailed Williams's climactic monologue, in which Randy confronts Lee, as the film's highlight; Justin Chang termed it an "astonishing scene that rises from the movie like a small aria of heartbreak." She received her fourth Oscar nomination, her second in the Best Supporting Actress category. 2017–present: Mainstream films,