Bigg Boss: Marathi actress Usha Nadkarni is the oldest contestant in the history of the show

Mumbai: The Marathi version of the popular yet controversial reality show Bigg Boss went on the air on Sunday this week. Hosted by filmmaker-actor Mahesh Manjrekar, the show has popular celebrities from Maharashtra on board.

Veteran Marathi actress Usha Nadkarni, 72, who has acted in quite a few Hindi TV soaps too, is a part of the show.

The others participants are  Resham Tipnis, Vineet Bhonde, Jui Gadkari, Aastad Kale, Anil Thatte, Smita Gondkar, Aarti Solanki, Bhushan Kadu, Megha Dhade, Pushkar Jog, Sai Lokur, Rutuja Dharmadhikari, Rajesh Shringarpore and Sushant Shelar.

Nadkarni is apparently the oldest contestant of the Bigg Boss show including the Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and Tamil versions. Before Nadkarni, fashion designer Kanwaljeet Singh, 60, had been a part of the show in 2015.

The Hindi version of Bigg Boss, an Indian version of a Dutch reality show Big Brother has successfully completed 11 seasons. 

The first season of the show was hosted by Arshad Warsi, followed by Shilpa Shetty and Amitabh Bachchan in the second and third editions respectively.

Bollywood superstar Salman Khan, who joined the team of Bigg Boss in 2011 by hosting the fourth season, became the face of the show. He was joined by his friend Sanjay Dutt for a brief period during the fifth season but since then, it has always been a Salman Khan show.

The Tamil version of the show was hosted by Kamal Haasan, while the Telugu version was hosted by Jr. NTR. Veteran actor Mithun Chakraborty had hosted the first season of the Bengali version and the second season was hosted by Jeet.

The Malayalam version of the show is expected to be hosted by superstar Mohanlal, reports suggest.