Rai's final release of 2016 was Karan Johar's romantic drama "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil", alongside Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma in which she played the role of a poet named Saba. Rai received mostly positive notice for her performance despite having limited screen time. Joe Leydon of "Variety" considered her to be the film's prime asset and wrote that she "seems to have wandered in from another movie, one where emotions are conveyed in subtler and more affecting fashion. When she takes her leave from "Ae Dil Hai Mushkil", you may wish you could go with her." The film emerged as one of her most commercially successful with revenues of over . Two years later, Rai played the part of a singer who is kidnapped by a troubled father in the unremarkable comedy-drama "Fanney Khan" (2018). An adaptation of the Belgian film "Everybody's Famous!" (2000), the film co-starred Anil Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao. Uday Bhatia of "Mint" disliked the film and found Rai "too unruffled a screen presence to convincingly sell the kind of silliness this film requires".